S. R. Crown Hall
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe · Chicago, United States · 1956
Crown Hall is Mies van der Rohe’s definitive expression of the universal clear-span room. Four exterior steel plate girders suspend the roof above a largely column-free main floor, allowing the architecture school to occupy one continuous, flexible studio. The disciplined black steel frame, glass envelope and symmetrical organization make structure and proportion the building’s primary visual language. Completed in 1956 on Mies’s IIT campus, Crown Hall remains one of the most influential academic buildings of twentieth-century modernism.