The IIT Mies Dormitories - composed Kacek, Cunningham, and Carman Halls; are a complete gut-renovations of three iconic 1950’s era Mies van der Rohe designed housing towers on the historic Mies Campus at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Sited in a quadrangle designed by modernist landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, these sibling buildings are situated perpendicular to each other defining the northeastern edge of the campus.
Originally completed in the 1950s, years of disuse and deferred maintenance had left these existing nine-story buildings a shadow of their original selves. Water had seeped into the brick knee walls; the radiant heating system in the cast-in-place-concrete flooring was beyond repair; and the uninsulated windows left the interiors defenseless against Chicago’s temperature extremes.
Kacek Hall, formerly Bailey Hall, Cunningham and Carmen were all built as eight levels of apartments that housed university faculty, staff, and married students. The original plans privileged privacy—a natural choice for a tower full of families. But the renovated Kacek and Cunningham Hall have now been redesigned as home to young students, including first-year students who are totally new to college life.
Our task was not only to renew the structures on a landmark campus to meet the needs of today’s students, but also to do so quickly and on an exceptionally tight budget. In navigating the stewardship of these buildings, we recognized each decision required a design position on what’s fixed and what’s flexible, informed by intimate understandings of Mies’ design principles and new high-performance systems.