S. R. Crown Hall

Crown Hall is a modern architecture university building at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, now listed as a National Historic Landmark and Chicago Landmark. The construction shows floor-to-ceiling glass walls and a suspended roof structure carried by external steel supports spaced roughly 60 feet apart.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed this structure in 1956 as part of his comprehensive master plan for the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. The project came about when the architect was realizing his ideas about open structure and industrial materials in Chicago.

The architecture school uses the column-free space for open workstations where students move in an environment that itself teaches material honesty and spatial clarity. The building serves both as a learning place and as a direct example of the principles taught here.

The structure stands at 3360 South State Street and has sandblasted windows in the lower section for privacy and clear windows above for daylight. The interior covers roughly 26,000 square feet (about 2400 square meters) of adaptable space without load-bearing interior walls.

Four steel plate girders carry the entire roof construction and create an uninterrupted interior space measuring roughly 220 feet by 120 feet (about 67 by 37 meters) with a ceiling height around 18 feet (5.5 meters). This solution allows the floor to remain completely free and no support interrupts the view or movement through the space.