Chicago
Photo © Steve Hall
It’s
a big deal for any architect to build at the Illinois Institute of Technology
(IIT). It was a big deal when Rem Koolhaas did in 2003—the last major
construction on Mies van der Rohe’s celebrated Chicago campus until now. In
designing the latest addition, John Ronan, a Chicagoan and professor at the
school’s prestigious architecture program, has more skin in the game. But Ronan
wasn’t afraid to take risks, from a technical point of view, and with respect
to history; his just-opened building embodies the spirit of Mies while at the
same time representing a complete break.
The
Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship—which hosts
a variety of collaboration spaces for IIT’s team-based endeavors, contains
state-of-the-art prototyping and fabrication facilities, and serves as the new
home for the formerly downtown Institute of Design—is the first academic
building completed at IIT in over 40 years. (Rem designed a student center;
Helmut Jahn built residence halls the same year.) Dimensionally, the innovation
center, as it’s more succinctly known, is a perfect fit within Mies’s
orthogonal master plan, and it follows Mies’s 24-foot-square grid that served
as the structural module. The low, rectangular building is similar in footprint
and height to its neighbor to the south, Hermann Hall, a 1962 SOM version of
Mies’s campus buildings from the 1940s and ’50s, including Crown Hall (1956),
considered among his masterworks.
In terms of appearance however, the
innovation center is nothing like the originals or later facsimiles.
Most
obviously, Ronan’s building is all white—the only such one on campus—and a
sharp contrast to the strong black palette to which even Koolhaas and Jahn
adhered, and the 19th-century redbrick buildings originally part of the Armour
Institute, IIT’s predecessor. And while Mies obsessed over the curtain wall,
and integrating the structure into it—which SOM’s later buildings failed to
fully do despite mimicking the roof girders of Crown Hall—Ronan turned the
whole thing on its head with a startling choice for the facade. His puffy ETFE
envelope is a first not just for this campus, but for the city. Says Ronan, “I
wanted it to be like a cloud against the heaviness of Crown Hall.”
Indeed,
while the other campus buildings seem so firmly rooted in both the ground and
Mies’s rigid plan, the innovation center—its ETFE-wrapped upper level slightly
cantilevered over the glass-enclosed ground floor to provide sunshading—hovers
above the quad on one side and a parking area on the other. Though employed
more prevalently in buildings in other parts of the world, ETFE’s architectural
use in the U.S. has been limited mainly to sports and transit facilities.
Fortunately for Ronan, his client, then president of IIT John L. Anderson, is a
chemical engineer. As Anderson puts it, “ETFE is a hybrid of teflon and polyethylene.
I like it.”
ETFE
is also a material that was unavailable to Mies, which made it appeal to Ronan.
The long bands of ETFE flowing along the exterior and interior of the
302-foot-long building remain permanently puffed, while two inner layers of the
polymer membrane move back and forth pneumatically, responding to the amount of
daylight. When the inner layer is pressed against the fritted outer layer, the
offset dot patterns overlap to reduce light transmission. A building automation
system “talks” to the facade, triggering fans, similar in size to those in
CPUs, that circulate low-velocity air within the layers to mitigate glare and
heat gain. The dynamic facade adapts throughout the day to changing weather in
real time to minimize energy usage and maximize daylighting potential. As an
assembly, the ETFE walls retain a rather opaque outward appearance during the
day while providing somewhat transparent views from the inside. At night, they
becomes more translucent, the luminous floating bands like a giant lantern on
campus, according to the architect.
Ronan
intentionally designed the 72,000-square-foot building to be so horizontal to
make it easy for students and professionals from different disciplines to
collaborate, resulting in vast areas not unlike Mies’s “universal space.” Given
the choice of several locations, Ronan selected this site on the north end of
campus because it was the only one that allowed him to spread out, and because
of its proximity to buildings for various academic departments. The lot was
once used for parking but was then planted; the mature trees, which had to be
felled in any case because of emerald ash borers, were turned into wood for
tabletops in the new LEED Gold–accredited building.
Within
that long two-story volume, Ronan inserted two courtyards that bring daylight
deeper into the structure. They are faced with a unitized curtain wall clad in
low-E-coated insulated glass. These areas also provide stormwater detention by
means of openings in the gutter around the courtyard, letting water run
unrestricted down rain chains to the gravel-covered surface below, which is
planted with serviceberry, hornbeam, and eastern redbud trees. On the upper
level, a terrace walkway of galvanized-steel industrial planks wraps around the
courtyards.
Despite
its renown, IIT is not a wealthy university. Construction costs were kept to
under $400 per square foot. Finishes are raw—concrete floors, visible steel
columns sprayed with fireproofing, and exposed metal deck ceilings—though all
cabling is white to maintain the cloud-like aesthetic inside and out. (Pops of
Post-It Note colors enliven the Tribune Stair, an assembly space on the ground
floor, and furnishings throughout the building.) In another sustainable move,
Ronan merged HVAC systems with the structure by way of water-filled tubing
embedded in the building’s floor slabs, to provide radiant heating and cooling.
The ETFE foil is approximately 1 percent of the weight of glass, reducing the
amount of required structure, and, when used as an exterior wall assembly,
significantly less expensive than one in glass. Layered as it is here, it also
has a higher insulation value than glass. One drawback of ETFE is its inability
to serve as an acoustic barrier. Open studios and lounges, which are less
disrupted by outside noise, line the perimeter of the upper level along the
ETFE walls, where it does indeed feel like being in a cloud, or at least Bubble
Wrap. Enclosed spaces for offices, conference rooms, classrooms, and project
rooms are located within the core.
With
so little construction at IIT, each addition is especially significant. Ronan’s
choices for this building, even if surprising, were good ones. The first
structures after Mies were inferior copies. A new wave of more daring
construction had Koolhaas and Jahn simultaneously introducing curves to what
was until then an inflexible campus aesthetic. Seventy-five years after Mies’s
first building at IIT, Ronan is pushing things further. His design addresses
21st-century needs for collaborative space, sustainability, and cost efficiency
while experimenting with materials and systems to channel the pursuit of
innovation that its users aspire to and that Mies so memorably brought to the
campus.
John Ronan will be speaking at RECORD's annual Innovation Conference on Thursday,
November 1.
An aerial view of the school grounds
shows Crown Hall in the foreground with the white innovation center on the
opposite edge of campus.
Photo © Michael Goss
The ETFE facade appears opaque
during the day.
Photo © Steve Hall
The building contains two planted courtyards; a stair leads to an upper-level terrace walkway.
Photo © Steve Hall
On the second level, open spaces
line the ETFE walls while, deeper inside, project rooms are enclosed.
Photo © Steve Hall
The Tribune Stair is a gathering
space on the ground floor.
Photo © Steve Hall
The building becomes a lantern at night.
Photo © Steve Hall