Koolhaas Controversy at Chicago's IIT - Illinois Institute of Technology must decide whether to go ahead with design for new student center - Brief Article

Art in America, July, 2000 by Franz Schulze

Ever since the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas won an international competition in 1998 for the design of a new student center for the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, controversy has simmered over his proposal, and lately it has come to a boil.

Most of the standing structures on the campus were put up by Mies van der Rohe in the 1950s. One of them, the Commons Building (1953), will be so tightly subsumed within the proposed Koolhaas envelope, and so altered inside and out, that some observers believe the quality of the Mies original will be severely compromised.

Meanwhile, Koolhaas has a band of admirers who are equally convinced that his design is first-rate and will do no injury to Mies's legacy as a whole or to the Commons Building in particular. Indeed, they believe the scheme will add measurably to the reputation of both the architect and the school.

On May 11, the debate entered an important new phase with the release of a report by the Illinois Historical Preservation Agency that objects to the Koolhaas proposal on a number of counts. Chiefly, the IHPA holds that since the Commons was designed as an independent, freestanding building, its incorporation into the Koolhaas complex would deprive it of its architectural identity. The report also decries the proposed addition of a stainless-steel foundation to the brick-clad Commons, and the erection of a wall that would loom over the building and block its clerestory windows.

Unlike many preservationist recommendations, the IHPA's adviso is one the lit administration is obliged to take seriously, since the agency has considerable financial clout. The most spectacular part of Koolhaas's design is a steel acoustic tube, a silencing device meant to be wrapped around the elevated train tracks that run directly above the site of the student center. The $9-million cost of the tube is to be provided by a state "Illinois FIRST" grant, but as part of the current contractual agreement, the IHPA can withhold that amount if lit does not make the changes specified in the agency's criticisms.

That condition and the reactions to it have reheated the debate. Whether Koolhaas and the school's administration will yield to the IHPA, or resist it, or reach some form of compromise, and on what issues, remains to be seen. Negotiations are bound to take time. But to all appearances, given Mies's historic stature, Koolhaas's rising reputation (he just won the Pritzker Prize [see p. 128]), and the passion of their respective supporters, the quarrel is likely to run deeper and last longer than any immediate solution.