Chicago,
IL - July 22, 2003 - Leaders
at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) cut the ribbon today on a
new, state-of-the-art student residence
hall complex, the first new building constructed on the historic
IIT campus in nearly 40 years.
State
Street Village, located at State and 33rd Streets, immediately west
of the Chicago Transit Authority’s
Green Line elevated train tracks, was designed by noted Chicago architect
Helmut Jahn. It is Jahn’s
first student residence hall design and his first new building in Chicago
in a decade.
“With
Helmut’s stunning design, IIT has elevated student housing to
a whole new level,” said IIT President Lew Collens. “Our
students will not only study in a dynamic classroom environment,
they will also
live in these exciting new state-of-the-art residential buildings.
Located at the crossroads of our campus, this Village - and it’s
soon-to-be-completed neighbor, The McCormick Tribune Campus Center—reflect
the University’s
recommitment to enhancing and strengthening the student life experience
at IIT.”
Jahn,
who came from Germany to study architecture at IIT in the late 1960s,
his work largely influenced by Mies van der
Rohe, created
three pairs of
five-story, U-shaped buildings, across the street from Mies-designed
campus buildings, including his masterwork, S.R. Crown Hall, a
National Historic
Landmark.
Constructed
of poured-in-place concrete and clad in glass and corrugated stainless
steel panels, Jahn’s Village also features
concrete and glass sound walls, to reduce commuter train noise and vibration.
Interiors
boast exposed concrete walls and floors, stainless steel fixtures
and flexible room furnishings to meet the needs of today’s students.
“There is much significance in this fairly small package,” said Jahn. “The
building makes a strong urban impact and anchors the campus quad,
but still has a transparency and a calm relationship to the Mies campus.
Also in
the way it relates to and engages the El. The aesthetic is not
added, rather it grows from within as the building shows what it is made of.”
The six-building complex includes a combination of suite and
apartment-style units to accommodate 360 IIT students beginning
in the fall 2003 semester.
Each unit is designed for student comfort and efficiency, including
voice, data and
television jacks in every suite, bedroom, living room and lounge area.
There
will be a 24-hour security attendant in each building entrance, with
cameras, to introduce guests
over the Web and computer-monitored
laundry
services that
alert students over the Web when washer and dryer cycles are completed.
Each pair of buildings also feature landscaped courtyards and outdoor
rooftop terraces, offering panoramic views of the campus and downtown.
Jahn,
perhaps best known for his award-winning designs of United Airlines
Terminal One at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and the State
of Illinois’ James
R.Thompson Center in downtown Chicago, was voted one of the Ten
Most Influential Living American Architects by the American Institute
of
Architects (AIA)
in 1991. In designing State Street Village, Jahn relied heavily
on input from
students
and took his inspiration from Mies, to create technologically advanced,
yet flexible space to support the way students live, study and work
in the 21st
century.
"State
Street Village does much more than offer a picture window into the
Mies Campus and his triumphant S.R. Crown Hall. Its
design is rooted in Mies’ philosophy
that the true task of architecture is to let the structure articulate
the space,” said
former Illinois Governor James R. Thompson, chairman of IIT’s
Mies van der Rohe Society. “State Street Village is a worthy
addition both to a campus that has become a landmark to generations
of architects and to Chicago,
the birthplace of modern architecture.”
Mies,
who died in 1969, served as dean of IIT's College of Architecture and
designed much of the university's main campus in the 1940s
and 50s. Mies'
modernist vision
and simple design, primarily using steel and glass, ushered
in
a new architectural era. He is widely considered the most influential
architect
of the 20th
century.
State
Street Village is 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
and The McCormick Tribune Campus Center, designed by renowned
architect Rem Koolhaas.
The neighboring Campus Center will open September 30, 2003.
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