McCormick Tribune Campus Center
Occupying a spot directly beneath an elevated train track, The McCormick Campus Center is the first building designed by Rem Koolhaas in the United States. In order to muffle the noisy trains above, Koolhaas actually designed two distinct buildings that are structurally separated from each other. The train is surrounded by an "acoustically isolating stainless steel tube".
The Campus Center beneath is entered through a 20 foot high glass portrait of Mies van der Rohe, who established himself at IIT after the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933. It houses a number of services that were previously spread out across the campus, including a bookstore, auditorium, coffee bar, post office, and convenience store.
The formal layout for the building was inspired by tracking the movements of the students as they crossed under the train tracks, making their way between the residence halls and the classrooms. The interior corridors follow these original paths with the services filling in between.
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