Chicago—Sept.
30, 2003—Leaders at Illinois Institute of Technology
(IIT) today joined with officials from the McCormick Tribune Foundation
and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to dedicate The McCormick
Tribune Campus Center. The much-anticipated building, designed by Dutch
architect and Pritzker Prize laureate Rem Koolhaas, marks the culmination
of five years of planning and construction on the historic Mies van der
Rohe-designed IIT Main Campus. It is Koolhaas’ and OMA’s first
completed building in North America.
The
$48.2 million Campus Center includes two primary components: a 110,000-square-foot,
one-story building to serve a wide variety of student activity functions;
and a 530-foot-long stainless steel clad tube that sits directly above
the building’s roof, designed to significantly muffle the noise and
vibration generated by passing Chicago Transit Authority commuter trains.
The complex forms a new nexus for the academic and residential corridors
of IIT’s Main Campus, approximately four miles south of Chicago’s
Downtown Loop.
Koolhaas’ interior layout for the building was inspired by pre-existing
footpaths that criss-crossed under the train tracks, formed by students
walking back and forth between residence halls and classroom buildings
on the IIT Main Campus during the past 70 years.
“The
Campus Center fulfills our vision to create a nucleus for this university,” said
IIT President Lew Collens. “Our exceptional students deserve this
one-of-a-kind space and at the same time it solidifies IIT’s leadership
role in architectural innovation: from the birth of Mies van der Rohe’s
revolutionary modernism to Rem Koolhaas’ daring concept that inspires
the next generation of architects and designers.”
The
Campus Center complex – from conception to completion – brought
together three of the world’s leading innovators: IIT, a 113-year-old
private, Ph.D.-granting university with programs in engineering, mathematics,
science, psychology, architecture, business, design and law; OMA, considered
one of the world’s top architecture and design firms; and the McCormick
Tribune Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropic foundations,
which provided $13 million in funding for the project.
“This building provided a great revitalization opportunity for
IIT and the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, ” said Dick Behrenhausen,
president and CEO of the McCormick Tribune Foundation. “We also
see it as a catalyst to usher in a rebirth of new, breakthrough architecture
in Chicago, the likes of which we haven’t witnessed in more than
a decade.”
Inside, the Campus Center boasts an array
of architectural and design innovations not seen anywhere in the world:
transparent and opaque glass
walls, unique floor and ceiling finishes, customized graphic elements
and a contoured, concrete roof to accommodate the bottom of the cylindrical
tube.
Dining facilities, auditorium and meeting
rooms, student organization offices, the campus bookstore, a coffee bar,
a post office and a convenience
store will all be located in The McCormick Tribune Campus Center,
unifying in one building functions that had been scattered in several
Main Campus
buildings. The new building also embraces the old; uniquely connecting
itself to the Mies-designed Commons Building, which is being fully
restored to be used as a central dining hall for the student residences.
The
tube, the predominate feature atop the building, was an integral component
of Koolhaas’ design for The McCormick Tribune Campus
Center, which won the Richard H. Dreihaus Foundation International
Design Competition in 1998.
“The elevated train has a huge impact
on IIT’s character,” said
Koolhaas. “It demanded an innovative technological concept
for the train enclosure for an institution devoted to technology.”
The
building’s unique architecture also makes an explicit
statement about IIT’s commitment to investment in the
ongoing resurgence of Chicago’s Near South Side. The
new Campus Center is the latest in a series of high profile
building projects in Bronzeville,
Chinatown,
Bridgeport and U.S. Cellular Field.
In July 2003, IIT opened
the new State Street Village student residence hall, designed
by award-winning Chicago architect
Helmut Jahn.
State Street Village and The McCormick Tribune Campus Center
are the first
new buildings to be constructed on the IIT Main Campus in
nearly 40 years.
Both buildings are part of IIT’s Main Campus Master
Plan, which received the prestigious 2003 Burnham Award from Chicago’s
Metropolitan Planning Council for excellence in planning. Other aspects
of the Master
Plan include a recently launched revitalization of Mies van
der Rohe campus buildings.
