The main campus of Illinois Institute
of Technology is one of the masterworks of Ludwig Mies van
der Rohe (1886-1969), a German-born architect and educator who
helped define modernist architecture. Mies is widely acknowledged
as one of the 20th century's greatest architects.
 Born
in Aachen, Germany, Mies van der Rohe spent the first half of his
career in his native country. His early work was mainly residential,
and he received his first independent commission, the Riehl House,
when he was just 20 years old. Mies quickly became a leading figure
in the avant-guard life of Berlin and was widely respected in Europe
for his innovative structures. In 1930 he was named director of
the Bauhaus, the renowned German school of experimental art and
design.
Across the globe, Armour Institute, one of IIT's predecessor
institutions, was founded in 1890, just as Chicago was emerging
as a center for progressive architectural thought. Men like Burnham
and Root, Sullivan and Adler, and William Le Baron Jenney were
transforming the practice and developing an architectural vocabulary
that emphasized structure and function. This generation of architects
founded what became known as the first Chicago School of architecture.
Mies
van der Rohe founded the next. In 1936, Earl Reed resigned as director
of the  Department
of Architecture at Armour. AIT, or Armour Institute of Technology,
engaged Chicago's architectural leaders in the search for a new
director,
and the
group, headed by John Holabird, recruited Mies. Germany's political
climate was changing under Nazism, and modern art and design were
increasingly viewed with suspicion. Mies eventually succumbed to
increasing political pressure and closed the Bauhaus. He decided
to accept Armour's offer and came to Chicago in 1938. The school,
Chicago, and the world were about to be transformed.
He
insisted on a back-to-basics approach to education: Architecture
students must learn to draw first; then gain thorough knowledge
of the character and use of the builder's materials; and finally
master the fundamental principles of design and construction. During
these early years, Mies held classes in space provided by the Art
Institute of Chicago.
 
In
1940, Armour Institute and Lewis Institute merged to form Illinois
Institute of Technology. Armour's original seven acres could not
accommodate the combined schools' needs, and Mies was encouraged
to develop plans for a newly expanded 120-acre campus. Not since
Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia (1819) had an American
campus been the work of a single architect.
Mies' original proposal called for a more traditional layout
of several large buildings grouped around an open space, but in
his final Master Plan he embraced Chicago's rectilinear street
grid and designed two symmetrically balanced groups of buildings.
Mies' academic buildings stood in sharp contrast to the patrician
campuses of the past. They embodied 20th century methods and materials:
steel and concrete frames with curtain walls of brick and glass.
The sleek urbanism of IIT's campus was a reflection of both the
university's technological focus and the decidedly blue collar,
first generation college student heritage of its predecessor institutions.
Mies' buildings are both magisterial and harmonious, and
they set a new aesthetic standard for modern architecture.
Indeed,
Mies' designs have so pervaded our definition of architecture that
it is difficult to imagine how revolutionary, even radical the
campus was when it was first built.  Mies went on to design some
of the nation's most recognizable skyscrapers, including the Lake
Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago and the Seagram Building in New
York City.
Mies' architecture has been described as expressive of the industrial
age as Gothic was of the age of ecclesiasticism. In 1956, famed
architect Eero Saarinen spoke at the dedication of Mies' masterwork,
S.R. Crown Hall, and lauded him as Chicago's third great artist,
placing Mies in the prestigious lineage of Louis Sullivan and Frank
Lloyd Wright. Saarinen explained what made Mies' work extraordinary:
Great architecture is both universal and individual. . . . The
universality comes because there is an architecture expressive
of its time. But the individuality comes as the expression of one
man's unique combination of faith and honesty and devotion and
belief in architecture.
After 20 years as director of architecture at IIT, Mies resigned
his position in 1958 at age 72. Honors and awards poured in. In
1959, the Royal Institute of British Architects bestowed its Gold
Medal on Mies, and the following year he received the AIA Gold
Medal, the highest award given by the American Association of Architects.
President Lyndon Johnson presented Mies with the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in 1963. Mies van der Rohe died in Chicago in 1969.
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