I got the inspector out, supposedly, but the answer was that the work is "in accordance with the permit." which it very obviously isn't. so now i don't know what to do. wasn't sure if anyone else had ever encountered this experience...?
Hey guys, what do you think is the definitive Chicago architecture book? I really enjoyed the Devil In the White City and would like to read more. I'm most interested in depth and scope of information. I like it to cover historical people and projects as well as modern developments in the city. Pictures are nice but certainly not required. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Cool, I will look into it. Anything that has been published more recently, that would include buildings from the last couple decades, or should i go with the general belief that nothing worth a damn has been built here in a quarter century.
Well if you mean worth a dam as in gay european twisty metal on stilts with holes in it then no - not much to see here. If you mean well built functional popular buildings then yes plenty.
evil, I was specifically thinking of buildings with large spires, holes in the sides and/or color changing facades. j/k seriously though, I'm with you on that and was just saying it to get a rise. I still would appreciate any further suggestions. I'm trying to add some new books to my architecture/engineering library and thought I would get 1 or 2 on Chicago.
awesome vid poz - didnt they used to play that at the skydeck at John hancock when we were kids?
Synergy - Theres a good book called Chicago Architecture and Design 1923 - 1993. It really gets into the firms and their role in Corporate design, Suburban planning, Malls, urban renewal - the good and the bad. It ends however with the late 80's so none of the most recent stuff.
"Chicago, like many urban centers throughout the world, has recently undergone a surge in new construction, grafting a new layer of architectural experimentation onto those of past eras. In early 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, with the support of U.S. Equities Realty, invited Michael Wolf as an artist-in-residence to document this phenomenon. Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city renowned for its architectural legacy, Wolf chose to photograph the central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux. "
My previous post I didnt mean to be so negative - but a lot of people have deplored Chicago as a design backwater because we arent doing Zaha, Rem ( well one) and the like - and I think thats a good thing. Chicago seems to buck the trend on a lot of things instead gravitating towards an evolution of the practicle art versus the avante garde. And i think it does it to great effect. especially when individule buildings come together to form a larger city.
I agree, I read/flip through record and sometimes I just get tired of seeing all these museums that are nothing more than a metallic amorphous sculpture in middle of a manicured grassy field. At this point, bizarre and unique have somehow become normal and even boring.
I feel like there is something very respectful about the kinds of design we have going on in Chicago. We aren't going around spitting in the face of history, instead we take the knowledge and skills of generations and add our new ideas and new technology.
Aqua is a great example. It's not a building designed to blow your mind, instead it is a essentially a very traditional concrete structure with the addition of subtle but beautiful curved forms that would have been difficult to design and construct in the past. The result is somehow familiar and contextual while still exciting and new.
The Chicago Architecture and Design 1923 - 1993 sounds good, I will check it out. Thanks.
Some of the most refined, coherent Architecture you will ever see are the Mid-century / 60's High-Rise apartment buildings along LSD - there is some junk, But look at each building individually - some of the best have a symbiotic relationship with their older Adjacent co-ops. My favorite stretch is between Oak Street and North Avenue.....I just wish they didn't destroy so many Amazing Mansions to get there.
"avant garde" does not necessary equal "impractical". Visiting Zaha Hadid's Cincinnati Art Center, or whatever it's called, is an eye-opener... you might think she does impractical work, and i myself did think so, but when you visit you are forced to the concede the point. OMA's IIT student union has the same sense of wonderful marriage of avant garde with true usefulness gives practical spaces a sense of excitement that they are often otherwise lacking... for example in the quiet pristine modernist chapels of the rest of IIT's campus. Simply because something is avant garde does not inherently make it impractical. What would you say of Krueck & Sexton's Spertus facade?
Not avante garde. Spertus is fairly rational actually and the facade is ornament paying homage to the ornamental streetwall its embeded into.
Rem's student centeris the most overated building in Chicago. Sure its interesting but hardly worth the $$$ or time or praise it recieves. IIT needed a student center badly but REM's will be forgetten sooner rather than later as a piece of architecture.
i think its pretty interesting how divisive that student center has turned out to be. Having lived and worked in that building for 3 years, i feel im pretty much an expert on it.
Agreed Evil, IIT needed a student center badly, and what they got wasn't exactly what they expected, but I dont think thats a bad thing.
Virtually every single person from outside IIT who visits it is immediately impressed and curious. I fielded dozens of questions every day about the building, and when i gave campus tours to both architects and non, i inevitably took more question on the MTCC than any other building on campus (including crown hall).
The truth of the matter is IIT is a case where the addition of an ICON has had, and will continue to have a MAJOR positive affect. Granted, iconic buildings are not always the solution, but in the center of a struggling campus, in a non descript neighborhood, on a forgotten side of town was exactly what the dr. ordered. It signifies a renewed investment in the school and the campus and it has paid direct dividends in attendance.
Not to mention the building is very well used, much more well used than the previous student center. You can criticize all you want the execution of the building, or maybe its too loud and its not great for studying in blah blah blah... all inconsequential. It is unquestionably the center of campus for both students and visitors. That in and of itself is a crucial identifier.
When i visited IIT for the first time in 2001, there was nothing positive to be heard from any student. When you visit the campus now, you may here dissenting opinions, but the conversation is no longer about how ugly the campus is. The conversation is about the actual buildings and their relevance. A massively important distinction in my mind.
I dont know - in 15 years it will be outdated and prob torn down for like a new dorm or biz school. maybe aqua center. i agree it iconic - today, tomorrow who knows.
I think the campus "center" is basically just a hollow tunnel between more specific locations throughout the IIT campus. Sure it is the physical center of the campus, but it fails to provide useful spaces for students to collect and interact. It has a few nice spots to collect, but for it's floor area, far too much space is devoted to none descript hallway spaces. Not to mention it also has entirelly wasted volumes with virtually no program whatsoever (think the of the space north of the northwest entrance, what is it's function, beyond serving as the viewing gallery for the little icon images printed on the wall.
If the intention was simply to provide the hallway through which students might pass, wasn't the existing field in it's place already accomplishing this goal?
Also, IIT does a pretty poor job of opperating the building (no offense intended to you at all Letdown) Try actually studying in the MTCC, good luck. Sure the architects have their open-24-hour-a-day Crown Hall as a haven for studying together, but what of the rest of the student body? They are left with only the catacomb like dorm basements. The building and it's limited resources should be available to the students 24 hours a day (not sure who I'm complaining to here, but still, it should be).
The Helmut Jahn State Street Village are a better, semi-"iconic" building on IIT's main campus. My only substantial gripe is the back facade, which should have been given more care, given that it is quite visible from many locations on the campus.
well they actually have a pretty specifically detailed (and award winning) master plan for the future of the campus. The mtcc is going no where, thought all the parking along state street will be gone.
Work has already begun on picking an architect for the next set of dorms which will be built just north of the MTCC. The thought is that the funding model will be similar to the state street village. Privately owned for a set period of time, with the university buying it back through the rent payments of its students.
im not sure why it would be out dated in 15 years. If its maintained, i see no reason it cant be a flexible building... the materiality is not delicate. Epoxy sealed concrete and stainless steel floor? Glazing and cement board? there's nothing terribly exotic about that building beyond its form...
i recall somewhere reading there was already a short list for the next dorm building, and that construction was supposed to start in the not too distant future... ill try and find out more over lunch
the ramps are forced - all to fit under the el. too many level changes - so lets squeeze a building under a train, that doesnt even stop there? Then build an enormous 4 hour fire tube around it? It seems like the absolute worse possible planning concidering theres acres and acres of empty land there.
They blew it with the train station. it should have stopped at the center. But I hope Im wrong - the 75 year IIT campus experiment stumbles on....
i honestly think the lack of functionality that people complain about in the MTCC is short sighted.
If the idea behind the student center was to create a study hall, and propagate the notion that IIT is a soul less pit of academia, they would have built it.
CLEARLY, they chose to do the opposite. To enliven the campus. If you base you're judgment of the MTCC on the status quo student center, then it will fail to meet your expectations. If you accept that the goal was not to build a study hall, but to create a sort of general hub for the IIT campus, than the MTCC hits the nail on the head.
Its all in the expectations, and i personally am very, very thankful that IIT chose not to build another HUB.
As for it operating 24/7 synergy, that was the original intention of the University, but funding short falls meant they had to limit the hours of operation of all non academic buildings. Insuring their use over night and paying public safeties costs were deemed luxuries. Im sure at some point in the future, it will be a 24 hour building.
All in all, criticizing a building for something it wasnt intended to do is completely pointless. Criticizing its aesthetic is legitimate, but i almost never hear anyone frame an argument about its functionality in its actual context. It functions poorly as a study hall because its not intended to be a study hall. Its hallways function poorly as quite meeting areas because they are not intended to be quiet meeting areas.
I know we will disagree forever on this Lletdown but IIT is part of the failed urban renewal era that destroyed a huge portion of a great city and has failed to replace it. Its an ongoing testament to government and institutional failure in the realm of public planning. They may eventually get it right, after 75 years and countless millions of dollars.
It fails in every regard save for being "interesting" and a loud hallway. I think critizing the intent of the building is very poignant in the context of architectural criticism. REM seems to have decided for himself that the building need only function in the way he sees fit, students, staff and visitors be damned.
I think your archo-centric view clouds your perspective on the rest of the campus and how it functions. For the none architecture students, life at IIT basically exists in two forms. First they live primarily to the east of MTCC in tiny dorms and second they take classes to the west of the MTCC in the various Mies buildings. The dorms lack any reasonable public gathering space save for a converted lunch room and the above described basements. The classroom buildings, are just that classroom buildings, with few additional spaces and very limited hours of use. Thus the students are left with nowhere to collect save for the giant hallway that is the MTCC.
Sure students pass by one another and "meet" at mtcc, but what to do when you are there? how about a nice game of pool you might ask. luckily the tables are located in the most barren and exposed space in the building, because, as everyone knows, no one likes a quiet intimate space for playing pool. How about a space to sit an read? Well there are three or four chairs on the Southeast corner of the building...of course those will never be filled. What about a Bowling alley, bar, music venue, theater/stage, rock climbing wall, basketball hoop, restuarant, or any number of other possible items that might be included in a campus center.
Your own comments about the future expansions of the campus betray the truth. If IIT does in fact build dorms to the north of MTCC, will they be adding additional doors to MTCC? because to the best of my knowledge there is not a direct student path that even exist the building in that direction. students living in these new dorms will simply bypass the MTCC. What possible reason could they have for passing through its hallways? Its lack of program ensures that it is not a destination, so why pass through it when it isn't on your way?
yes, please do criticize the intent of the building, but my point is criticize it in the correct context.
If you want to complain that the building has no place for quiet studying that is fair, but dont pretend that the MTCC TRIED to be a study hall and failed. IT MADE NO ATTEMPT AND NEVER PRETENDED TO!
That in and of its self is something you can argue. Argue that the school programed it poorly. Or that IIT misjudged the students needs. But to argue that the MTCC 'fails' because it doesn't deliver what you think it should is just irrelevant and pointless.
Personally, i dont think the MTCC is about "Hey guys, lets meet at the mtcc and hang out".
Its a public station.
Its a city street.
Its not in itself a destination.
I dont believe it was ever intended to be.
It is infrastructure.
What happens inside the MTCC has little to do with the architect and everything to do with the user. Its set up to facilitate head nods; quick 15 second conversations on the way to class; smiles; recognition of a neighbors face. Everything else is up for grabs, and whether you think its bad planning or not, relatively irrelevant to the judging of its value.
Would you complain that there's no place to study at union station? Would you argue that the intersection of North and Damen fails because theres no place to sit and talk without being distracted by your noisy surroundings?
all i am arguing is that you are comparing apples and oranges. the mtcc is not a library. it never pretended to be, it was never supposed to be. it has nothing to do with academia, it has nothing to do with scholarly activity. So dont criticize it for failing to be the things it never intended to be.
as for your comments about the future planning of iit, you are right. the people living to the north would likely never use the MTCC except to access the cafeteria...
no offense to anyone here but i just think it's an ugly ass building. i've never been inside it, but i saw it under construction, rode through the tube a few times, and ran past it during various chicago marathons.
I don't know if they can get off the hook so easily. Calling it a campus center implies certain things. If IIT built a new athletic facility and decided not to include locker rooms or basketball courts, I'd complain the same. Student and campus centers have general, concrete meanings at universities. Sure they are not all exactly the same and don't offer precisely the same program, but this one really, really stretches the definition in terms of its lack of program.
UIC works much better with the surrounding city - and is quite nice actualy. The buildings sort of hover over the little Italy neighboehood and has great views of the loop - wether by accident or design I dont know. But in both campuses case - they are tradgedies of Moderism gone crazy, and destroyed vibrant areas of the city - and both can be directly blamed i think for causing more not less "blight" and caused more people to abandon the city all together
I attended both schools and functionally I found the UIC campus much better than IIT. I especially like the lecture halls. Aesthetically, I think they are about even.
I like Crown Hall. Besides that building, Mies laid an egg. Not everything He did was worthy of our praise.
Ive been through this before with other Chicago Architects - its like a Mies intervention, we must break their addiction forcefully, and hopefully not lose them in the process forever. It can be permantly damaging to the person when faced with the fact that everything theyve ever known about modern architecture is myth. It will take some time reaquainting but you guys can do it. Im sure of this. Theres a new day on the other side.
I don't know, I find the jump from Crown Hall and his skyscrapers down to most of his other IIT campus buildings pretty jarring. I really don't know what makes them all that special. I love the open span and space of crown, and the exterior look is attractive too, but beyond that, what do the other buildings on the campus really bring to the table? I've never really gotten it. They aren't awful, but they don't seem particularly inspired either.
Aggregate Chicago
whoops - wrong image
ahaha i was wondering where you were going with that one.
I'm only posting here to fill out the top tier of threads - have fun going out drinking together, Chicago archinecteurs!
you guys want to pool together and by tribune tower?
maybe renovate half of it to look like loos' proposal? some kinda crazy two-face...
^Is that Tigerman's Proposal?
anyone here with any experience calling in building permit violations?
mantaray are you trying to get an inspector out to a project?
I got the inspector out, supposedly, but the answer was that the work is "in accordance with the permit." which it very obviously isn't. so now i don't know what to do. wasn't sure if anyone else had ever encountered this experience...?
ask em if you can have the good stuff they trashed and sell it on ebay.
the masons got it, i watched them. as per usual they know more about embedded value than the developer...
Hey guys, what do you think is the definitive Chicago architecture book? I really enjoyed the Devil In the White City and would like to read more. I'm most interested in depth and scope of information. I like it to cover historical people and projects as well as modern developments in the city. Pictures are nice but certainly not required. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
the chicago school by condit
is pretty informative.
Cool, I will look into it. Anything that has been published more recently, that would include buildings from the last couple decades, or should i go with the general belief that nothing worth a damn has been built here in a quarter century.
Well if you mean worth a dam as in gay european twisty metal on stilts with holes in it then no - not much to see here. If you mean well built functional popular buildings then yes plenty.
evil, I was specifically thinking of buildings with large spires, holes in the sides and/or color changing facades. j/k seriously though, I'm with you on that and was just saying it to get a rise. I still would appreciate any further suggestions. I'm trying to add some new books to my architecture/engineering library and thought I would get 1 or 2 on Chicago.
awesome vid poz - didnt they used to play that at the skydeck at John hancock when we were kids?
Synergy - Theres a good book called Chicago Architecture and Design 1923 - 1993. It really gets into the firms and their role in Corporate design, Suburban planning, Malls, urban renewal - the good and the bad. It ends however with the late 80's so none of the most recent stuff.
Another book which Ive preordered but looks cool -
the transparent city
"Chicago, like many urban centers throughout the world, has recently undergone a surge in new construction, grafting a new layer of architectural experimentation onto those of past eras. In early 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, with the support of U.S. Equities Realty, invited Michael Wolf as an artist-in-residence to document this phenomenon. Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city renowned for its architectural legacy, Wolf chose to photograph the central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux. "
My previous post I didnt mean to be so negative - but a lot of people have deplored Chicago as a design backwater because we arent doing Zaha, Rem ( well one) and the like - and I think thats a good thing. Chicago seems to buck the trend on a lot of things instead gravitating towards an evolution of the practicle art versus the avante garde. And i think it does it to great effect. especially when individule buildings come together to form a larger city.
here ya go 264 titles with the keyword chicago.
I agree, I read/flip through record and sometimes I just get tired of seeing all these museums that are nothing more than a metallic amorphous sculpture in middle of a manicured grassy field. At this point, bizarre and unique have somehow become normal and even boring.
I feel like there is something very respectful about the kinds of design we have going on in Chicago. We aren't going around spitting in the face of history, instead we take the knowledge and skills of generations and add our new ideas and new technology.
Aqua is a great example. It's not a building designed to blow your mind, instead it is a essentially a very traditional concrete structure with the addition of subtle but beautiful curved forms that would have been difficult to design and construct in the past. The result is somehow familiar and contextual while still exciting and new.
The Chicago Architecture and Design 1923 - 1993 sounds good, I will check it out. Thanks.
Some of the most refined, coherent Architecture you will ever see are the Mid-century / 60's High-Rise apartment buildings along LSD - there is some junk, But look at each building individually - some of the best have a symbiotic relationship with their older Adjacent co-ops. My favorite stretch is between Oak Street and North Avenue.....I just wish they didn't destroy so many Amazing Mansions to get there.
speaking of books, anybody have Richard Nickel's Chicago?
I had to pull myself away (due to a recent amazon.com spending spree)... but it looked amazing.
"avant garde" does not necessary equal "impractical". Visiting Zaha Hadid's Cincinnati Art Center, or whatever it's called, is an eye-opener... you might think she does impractical work, and i myself did think so, but when you visit you are forced to the concede the point. OMA's IIT student union has the same sense of wonderful marriage of avant garde with true usefulness gives practical spaces a sense of excitement that they are often otherwise lacking... for example in the quiet pristine modernist chapels of the rest of IIT's campus. Simply because something is avant garde does not inherently make it impractical. What would you say of Krueck & Sexton's Spertus facade?
Not avante garde. Spertus is fairly rational actually and the facade is ornament paying homage to the ornamental streetwall its embeded into.
Rem's student centeris the most overated building in Chicago. Sure its interesting but hardly worth the $$$ or time or praise it recieves. IIT needed a student center badly but REM's will be forgetten sooner rather than later as a piece of architecture.
i think its pretty interesting how divisive that student center has turned out to be. Having lived and worked in that building for 3 years, i feel im pretty much an expert on it.
Agreed Evil, IIT needed a student center badly, and what they got wasn't exactly what they expected, but I dont think thats a bad thing.
Virtually every single person from outside IIT who visits it is immediately impressed and curious. I fielded dozens of questions every day about the building, and when i gave campus tours to both architects and non, i inevitably took more question on the MTCC than any other building on campus (including crown hall).
The truth of the matter is IIT is a case where the addition of an ICON has had, and will continue to have a MAJOR positive affect. Granted, iconic buildings are not always the solution, but in the center of a struggling campus, in a non descript neighborhood, on a forgotten side of town was exactly what the dr. ordered. It signifies a renewed investment in the school and the campus and it has paid direct dividends in attendance.
Not to mention the building is very well used, much more well used than the previous student center. You can criticize all you want the execution of the building, or maybe its too loud and its not great for studying in blah blah blah... all inconsequential. It is unquestionably the center of campus for both students and visitors. That in and of itself is a crucial identifier.
When i visited IIT for the first time in 2001, there was nothing positive to be heard from any student. When you visit the campus now, you may here dissenting opinions, but the conversation is no longer about how ugly the campus is. The conversation is about the actual buildings and their relevance. A massively important distinction in my mind.
I dont know - in 15 years it will be outdated and prob torn down for like a new dorm or biz school. maybe aqua center. i agree it iconic - today, tomorrow who knows.
I think the campus "center" is basically just a hollow tunnel between more specific locations throughout the IIT campus. Sure it is the physical center of the campus, but it fails to provide useful spaces for students to collect and interact. It has a few nice spots to collect, but for it's floor area, far too much space is devoted to none descript hallway spaces. Not to mention it also has entirelly wasted volumes with virtually no program whatsoever (think the of the space north of the northwest entrance, what is it's function, beyond serving as the viewing gallery for the little icon images printed on the wall.
If the intention was simply to provide the hallway through which students might pass, wasn't the existing field in it's place already accomplishing this goal?
Also, IIT does a pretty poor job of opperating the building (no offense intended to you at all Letdown) Try actually studying in the MTCC, good luck. Sure the architects have their open-24-hour-a-day Crown Hall as a haven for studying together, but what of the rest of the student body? They are left with only the catacomb like dorm basements. The building and it's limited resources should be available to the students 24 hours a day (not sure who I'm complaining to here, but still, it should be).
The Helmut Jahn State Street Village are a better, semi-"iconic" building on IIT's main campus. My only substantial gripe is the back facade, which should have been given more care, given that it is quite visible from many locations on the campus.
|LD| knows im not a fan of the McTrib. It looks like a flea-market threw-up in there.
even the 1997 raver graphics were out of style by the time they actualy finished it.
I do like the tube - although it would be more awesome if the train stopped in it.
well they actually have a pretty specifically detailed (and award winning) master plan for the future of the campus. The mtcc is going no where, thought all the parking along state street will be gone.
Work has already begun on picking an architect for the next set of dorms which will be built just north of the MTCC. The thought is that the funding model will be similar to the state street village. Privately owned for a set period of time, with the university buying it back through the rent payments of its students.
im not sure why it would be out dated in 15 years. If its maintained, i see no reason it cant be a flexible building... the materiality is not delicate. Epoxy sealed concrete and stainless steel floor? Glazing and cement board? there's nothing terribly exotic about that building beyond its form...
i recall somewhere reading there was already a short list for the next dorm building, and that construction was supposed to start in the not too distant future... ill try and find out more over lunch
the ramps are forced - all to fit under the el. too many level changes - so lets squeeze a building under a train, that doesnt even stop there? Then build an enormous 4 hour fire tube around it? It seems like the absolute worse possible planning concidering theres acres and acres of empty land there.
They blew it with the train station. it should have stopped at the center. But I hope Im wrong - the 75 year IIT campus experiment stumbles on....
i honestly think the lack of functionality that people complain about in the MTCC is short sighted.
If the idea behind the student center was to create a study hall, and propagate the notion that IIT is a soul less pit of academia, they would have built it.
CLEARLY, they chose to do the opposite. To enliven the campus. If you base you're judgment of the MTCC on the status quo student center, then it will fail to meet your expectations. If you accept that the goal was not to build a study hall, but to create a sort of general hub for the IIT campus, than the MTCC hits the nail on the head.
Its all in the expectations, and i personally am very, very thankful that IIT chose not to build another HUB.
As for it operating 24/7 synergy, that was the original intention of the University, but funding short falls meant they had to limit the hours of operation of all non academic buildings. Insuring their use over night and paying public safeties costs were deemed luxuries. Im sure at some point in the future, it will be a 24 hour building.
All in all, criticizing a building for something it wasnt intended to do is completely pointless. Criticizing its aesthetic is legitimate, but i almost never hear anyone frame an argument about its functionality in its actual context. It functions poorly as a study hall because its not intended to be a study hall. Its hallways function poorly as quite meeting areas because they are not intended to be quiet meeting areas.
I know we will disagree forever on this Lletdown but IIT is part of the failed urban renewal era that destroyed a huge portion of a great city and has failed to replace it. Its an ongoing testament to government and institutional failure in the realm of public planning. They may eventually get it right, after 75 years and countless millions of dollars.
It fails in every regard save for being "interesting" and a loud hallway. I think critizing the intent of the building is very poignant in the context of architectural criticism. REM seems to have decided for himself that the building need only function in the way he sees fit, students, staff and visitors be damned.
I think your archo-centric view clouds your perspective on the rest of the campus and how it functions. For the none architecture students, life at IIT basically exists in two forms. First they live primarily to the east of MTCC in tiny dorms and second they take classes to the west of the MTCC in the various Mies buildings. The dorms lack any reasonable public gathering space save for a converted lunch room and the above described basements. The classroom buildings, are just that classroom buildings, with few additional spaces and very limited hours of use. Thus the students are left with nowhere to collect save for the giant hallway that is the MTCC.
Sure students pass by one another and "meet" at mtcc, but what to do when you are there? how about a nice game of pool you might ask. luckily the tables are located in the most barren and exposed space in the building, because, as everyone knows, no one likes a quiet intimate space for playing pool. How about a space to sit an read? Well there are three or four chairs on the Southeast corner of the building...of course those will never be filled. What about a Bowling alley, bar, music venue, theater/stage, rock climbing wall, basketball hoop, restuarant, or any number of other possible items that might be included in a campus center.
Your own comments about the future expansions of the campus betray the truth. If IIT does in fact build dorms to the north of MTCC, will they be adding additional doors to MTCC? because to the best of my knowledge there is not a direct student path that even exist the building in that direction. students living in these new dorms will simply bypass the MTCC. What possible reason could they have for passing through its hallways? Its lack of program ensures that it is not a destination, so why pass through it when it isn't on your way?
ok to start,
yes, please do criticize the intent of the building, but my point is criticize it in the correct context.
If you want to complain that the building has no place for quiet studying that is fair, but dont pretend that the MTCC TRIED to be a study hall and failed. IT MADE NO ATTEMPT AND NEVER PRETENDED TO!
That in and of its self is something you can argue. Argue that the school programed it poorly. Or that IIT misjudged the students needs. But to argue that the MTCC 'fails' because it doesn't deliver what you think it should is just irrelevant and pointless.
Personally, i dont think the MTCC is about "Hey guys, lets meet at the mtcc and hang out".
Its a public station.
Its a city street.
Its not in itself a destination.
I dont believe it was ever intended to be.
It is infrastructure.
What happens inside the MTCC has little to do with the architect and everything to do with the user. Its set up to facilitate head nods; quick 15 second conversations on the way to class; smiles; recognition of a neighbors face. Everything else is up for grabs, and whether you think its bad planning or not, relatively irrelevant to the judging of its value.
Would you complain that there's no place to study at union station? Would you argue that the intersection of North and Damen fails because theres no place to sit and talk without being distracted by your noisy surroundings?
all i am arguing is that you are comparing apples and oranges. the mtcc is not a library. it never pretended to be, it was never supposed to be. it has nothing to do with academia, it has nothing to do with scholarly activity. So dont criticize it for failing to be the things it never intended to be.
as for your comments about the future planning of iit, you are right. the people living to the north would likely never use the MTCC except to access the cafeteria...
no offense to anyone here but i just think it's an ugly ass building. i've never been inside it, but i saw it under construction, rode through the tube a few times, and ran past it during various chicago marathons.
I don't know if they can get off the hook so easily. Calling it a campus center implies certain things. If IIT built a new athletic facility and decided not to include locker rooms or basketball courts, I'd complain the same. Student and campus centers have general, concrete meanings at universities. Sure they are not all exactly the same and don't offer precisely the same program, but this one really, really stretches the definition in terms of its lack of program.
AH HA! see, now youve exposed youre inherent inflexibility! who says campus centers must have concrete meanings? why is no innovation allowed?
the prior prototypical campus student center was the Hub. Is that a more successful building?
This is why the iit and the surrounding environs look like ass cakes
at least its not UIC... talk about a planning travesty...
UIC works much better with the surrounding city - and is quite nice actualy. The buildings sort of hover over the little Italy neighboehood and has great views of the loop - wether by accident or design I dont know. But in both campuses case - they are tradgedies of Moderism gone crazy, and destroyed vibrant areas of the city - and both can be directly blamed i think for causing more not less "blight" and caused more people to abandon the city all together
And the area around UIC is awesome - dont go there lletdown
I attended both schools and functionally I found the UIC campus much better than IIT. I especially like the lecture halls. Aesthetically, I think they are about even.
I like Crown Hall. Besides that building, Mies laid an egg. Not everything He did was worthy of our praise.
Ive been through this before with other Chicago Architects - its like a Mies intervention, we must break their addiction forcefully, and hopefully not lose them in the process forever. It can be permantly damaging to the person when faced with the fact that everything theyve ever known about modern architecture is myth. It will take some time reaquainting but you guys can do it. Im sure of this. Theres a new day on the other side.
evil you are such a homer...
dont hate on mies because you weren't blessed with his ever inspiring presence...
I don't know, I find the jump from Crown Hall and his skyscrapers down to most of his other IIT campus buildings pretty jarring. I really don't know what makes them all that special. I love the open span and space of crown, and the exterior look is attractive too, but beyond that, what do the other buildings on the campus really bring to the table? I've never really gotten it. They aren't awful, but they don't seem particularly inspired either.
Its like 2 girls, 1 cup - only with buildings
I've been seeing Synergy a lot on the boards and I nominate Syn for new poster / thoughtful contributor ( and better speller than I) of the month.
it says in your bio youve been on archinect for 2 years yet you only recently seem to have surfaced.
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