S. R. Crown Hall

S. R. Crown Hall, designed by the German-American Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is the home of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois.HistoryWidely regarded as one of Mies van der Rohe's masterpieces, Crown Hall, completed in 1956, is one of the most architecturally significant buildings of the 20th century Modernist movement. Crown Hall is considered architecturally significant because Mies van der Rohe refined the basic steel and glass construction style, beautifully capturing simplicity and openness. While designing Crown Hall, Mies stayed true to his famous words, "less is more" and he considered the building to be the best embodiment of that maxim. Mies once described his creation as being "almost nothing." With World War II and the Great Depression leaving a large break in construction, Mies reconstructed curriculum to appreciate minimalism and to focus on using only what was necessary; an approach not yet favorable in most architecture schools of the time.Centrally located on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, two miles south of downtown Chicago, Illinois, the building houses IIT's school of architecture. The two-level building is configured as a pure rectangular form, 220 ft. by 120 ft. by 18 ft. tall. The enclosed space is column free with four six ft. steel plate girders welded to eight H-columns. These girders suspend the roof in a single plane to form a primary structure. While the