Tiny Icons, and Voila! A Portrait!

These are my last photographs I will post from the walking tour through the McCormick Tribune Campus Center (architect OMA/Rem Koolhaas 2003) on Illinois Institute of Technology‘s campus in Chicago. Other buildings I shot, including Mies’ Crown Hall and a huge dormitory that has a shape resembling a speeding commuter train, will be featured next.

I would have missed this photo were it not for the tour docent. After we had loaded onto the Chicago Architecture Foundation‘s bus, he pointed out a vague portrait of Mies made up of small diameter icons on the glass entrance to the building. It was difficult to see, but the docent said, “I’m told the portrait is more visible when taken with a digital camera.” Always up to a photo challenge, I and another young man toting a camera jumped back off the warm bus, and the tour group patiently waited while we clicked away.

Later in the bus I let the docent chimp my photos so he could see the portrait. Just as he had claimed, the icons formed into an interesting portrait of Ludwig Mies von der Rohe, the architect who was instrumental in setting up IIT’s architectural school and implementing an architectural movement on IIT’s campus and beyond.

Icons Show Student Activities

The New York City multimedia firm, 2×4 Inc., designed a set of functional graphic art for the building — murals, wallpaper, clocks, lighting, textiles, signs — that represent the various functions of the building. I was told by Sherpa that even the bathrooms follow the theme, but I didn’t check out that tip.

(Next time I visit, I am going to do an exploration of these individual icons to see what goes on in this building – camera in hand, of course!) Though it was officially winter break, I did see students studying, lounging, eating, and everywhere, there were people working on computers. But there are hundreds of icons. So there must be more…

In honor of Mies’s contribution and influence on the school, 2×4 etched his portrait on the facade of the building and on the sliding glass doors that serve as the main entrance. To enter the building, one must walk, literally, into Mies’s mouth. (How about that for symbolism?)

 McCormick Tribune Campus Center

Though I lived in Chicago for several years while in school and after, I never did much investigation of the city’s exemplary architecture. That all changed last weekend when I took a Chicago Architecture Foundation tour called Chicago Highlights and checked out some great buildings in the Loop, on the North side, and then I found a few new favorites on the South Side.

I chose the Highlights Tour because it offered an interior tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Hyde Park. And I did love the Wright House, but I loved photographing the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) even more. Even though we toured the campus under a heavy cover of gray clouds, and in chilly temps, it was a true joy with camera in hand.

I have a huge file of photographs to go through, but this photo of the McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) was one of my favorites SOOC (straight out of camera). How can you miss with all those converging lines and those oranges and greens? This was one great building – all lines, details, colors – a combination dining facility, bookstore, computer center and more, and all tucked under a metal network of Chicago Transit elevated train (“L”) tracks. The building was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, completed in 2003, and included a renovation of the Commons Building (1953) designed by IIT’s most famous architect, Ludwig Meis van der Rohe.

I’ll be posting a series of photos from the entire tour including more photos from IIT – both interiors and exteriors from the Campus Center, and exterior photos of the S. R. Crown Hall by Meis and State Street Village, a student dorm by architect Helmut Jahn.

Coming next: the “tube” on top of the MTCC that keeps the vibration and noise of the commuter train from invading the student’s space.