Minerals and Metals Building

For more than 60 years the M&M Building served as a background building for manufacturing, private industry, and for facility staging and storage. Mies’ first commission in the United States, the building features a main hall of 14,000 square feet that has 40 feet ceiling height and is equipped with 1 and 13 ton cranes. The building contains the College’s comprehensive materials lab, with tools and machinery for working with wood, metal and plastics as well as a large paint booth. The spacious facility allows for an opportunity to turn architectural models into full size mockups and facilitates the work of our Design/Build studios.

The second level provides space for faculty offices and informal break- out spaces. The third level is utilized for faculty offices and student project storage. The College offers students and faculty robust electronic and computing resources in conjunction with IIT’s Office of Technology Services. There is wireless access (802.11b/g) in all College-controlled spaces. The COA continues to provide wired network connections when appropriate for student and faculty use. All faculty offices, studio spaces, the Library and COA computer labs are hard-wired.

In fall 2006, the College opened the second of two multimedia labs, each with 30+ computer stations. All of the labs’ PCs include a variety of software products that support curricula aims of architecture faculty. The College employs a three-year refreshment program, meaning that every three years all Lab hardware is upgraded. Each building that the College inhabits contains output functionality including black and white and color printers and plotters for larger format documents.