Archinect - News

Mies van der Rohe's rediscovered early-50s design opens at Indiana University

2022-02-22T16:17:00-05:00

A rediscovered 70-year-old Mies van der Rohe design that was reimagined for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University has been inaugurated after the six-year-old institution announced the official opening of one of the most interesting pieces of academic architecture in recent memory.

Based on the architect’s abandoned 1952 plans for a fraternity on the Bloomington campus, the team at Thomas Phifer and Partners were able to rework the original design into an expanded home for the school’s faculty and students beginning in the spring semester.

Image © Anna Powell Denton

The process began in 2013 after Sidney Eskenazi, a member of the fraternity that commissioned the design originally, informed IU’s then-president Michael A. McRobbie about drawings that had previously been thought by many to have been lost. A research endeavor thus was conducted with assistance from MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago that unearthed the additional documentation essential...

Mies van der Rohe design for Indiana University is being built, 70 years later

2021-06-18T12:21:00-04:00

Indiana University (IU) has shared an update of their Mies Building at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. The scheme, currently under construction, realizes a recently rediscovered 1952 design by Mies van der Rohe for the IU Bloomington campus. The scheme has been adapted for contemporary use by architects Thomas Phifer and Partners and is expected to open in the Fall of 2021.

When completed, the Mies Building will be a 60-foot-wide, 140-foot-long rectangular structure of thin, white-painted steel and expansive glass with 10-square-foot panes. Floor-to-ceiling windows will wrap around the entire second story, which will feature a central exterior square atrium to enhance the building’s aura of transparency. Much of the lower level is external, with the main second story elevated above the ground.

Exterior view of the northwest corner of the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, a Mies van der Rohe Design, on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington. ...

Modernist Columbia, IN building finds new life as architecture school outpost

2018-05-04T13:42:00-04:00

Next fall, Indiana University announced Monday, the building will house the university’s new master of architecture program, serving as an outpost of the flagship Bloomington campus 36 miles to the west. But this will be no ordinary outpost. Columbus, a small-town architectural mecca, boasts buildings by such renowned architects as Eliel and Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Chicago’s Harry Weese.

Blair Kamin tells the story of the former The Republic newspaper building—a modernist gem designed by SOM partner Myron Goldsmith and opened in 1971—which will soon find a second life as Indiana University's new architecture graduate program studio in Columbus, Indiana.