SHALMALI WAGLE
Architecture | Theory | Journalism
ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY + MCCORMICK TRIBUNE CAMPUS CENTRE, CHICAGO.
(Architects: Mies Van Der Rohe (1056) + Rem Koolhaas (1997))
Part of his master-plan of the institution campus and widely regarded as Mies van der Rohe's masterpiece, Crown Hall, completed in 1956, is one of the most architecturally significant buildings of the 20th century Modernist movement, and the start to the International Style of building, owing to the refinement of the basic steel and glass construction style, beautifully capturing simplicity and openness.
The McCormick Tribune Campus Center was the first building designed by Rem Koolhaas in the United States. The site was previously a heavily used student parking lot with tracks of the elevated train passing overhead. Koolhaas tracked the movement of students across the lot, which led to diagonal passageways as the center's interior thoroughfares with campus functions, which had been spread around campus, relocated between these pathways.
SW_December 2013.