hinge – July 2019

hinge 275_46

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Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA

John Ronan Architects

Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech

Entrepreneurship

The first new building at IIT in forty years, situated within the famed Mies van

der Rohe campus (not to put pressure on anyone), is a classic modernist affair,

which seems as it should be. The building is extravagantly horizontal: a long,

low, floating white box raised above the recessed ground floor like the hulk of a

stealth battleship. Between upper and lower framing bands of silver metal the

elevations of the upper box are clad in translucent white glass, which appears

opaque by day, and glowing by night. The very long segments of horizontally

oriented glass are each bowed slightly, so that the box seems in a way like a

very long pillow. The ground floor is open to the world, and features a central

orifice leading into an enclosed inner courtyard planted as a garden. You can

pass through the institute to cross the campus, linger in the courtyard, or

enter for your purposes. The glazing on the ground level is minimally mullioned,

as if the thinnest barriers possible between cold and warm had been laid onto

Photography by Steve Hall

the plan. The underside of the upper box, where it crosses the gap as a

bridge, is likewise expertly finished, its white metal panels joined together in a

grid of reveal-seams.

From the courtyard it becomes evident the upper box isn’t all white; the

courtyard elevations switch to clear glass (notably, changing to a vertical

alignment of glass panels), enabling occupants to see the garden enclosure

from all flanks of the doughnut-shaped plan. An outdoor balcony terrace

wraps one side. On the inside, this internal transparency becomes important,

as the institute acts like a cloister of focussed work. The spaces throughout

the building are flooded with natural light and, given the closed aspect of the

white glass, ironically feel open to the campus outside. Almost all internal

surfaces save the pale concrete floors are finished in clean white tones. High