Photo © William Zbaren
The University
Illinois Institute of Technology was founded in 1890 when minister Frank Wakely Gunsaulus challenged Chicago business leaders to see higher education as something other than a province of the privileged. Meat packer Philip Danforth Armour stepped forward with $1 million and Armour Institute was born, first offering classes in engineering, chemistry, library science, and…architecture. Illinois Institute of Technology was born when Armour merged with arts and sciences-based Lewis Institute in 1940. Today’s IIT, referred to colloquially as “Illinois Tech,” is a modern university of more than 8,000 students, faculty, and staff, located on a landmarked 120-acre campus in the Bronzeville neighborhood, about three miles south of downtown Chicago.
Learn more about Illinois Tech.
The College of Architecture
Illinois Institute of Technology has offered architectural education since its founding in 1893. Today, some 700 students, 100 faculty, 15 staff, 20 Board of Advisors members, one office mascot (Maddy, a labrador mix), and thousands of alumni are part of our broader community. The college occupies nearly 100,000 square feet of teaching and research space, including our landmark home in Crown Hall; Tech North (originally the Institute of Gas Technology); our spectacular Fabrication Center, located in the former Minerals and Metals building—the first structure completed by Mies in the United States); and faculty offices, seminar rooms, and research spaces in Tech Central. We offer eight degree programs in architecture and landscape architecture at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate levels. Due to the remarkable students and faculty who have called it home, the college has enjoyed a long and distinguished history (see History & Legacy). That continues today.
Students
Our 700 students come from all 50 United States and another 50 countries on 6 continents (no one from Antarctica yet, but it could happen). The largest group hails from Chicago and the Midwest, which, given our location, makes sense. But from the opening of the school, people have traveled great distances to be here, to study with remarkable faculty, and to work in Crown Hall, and as a result, the college has always had a very international character: On any given day, you can hear one of some 20 languages being spoken. We’re proud that nearly half our students are the first generations in their families to go to college, that half are women, and that half are from groups traditionally not well represented in architecture. Some are scholars (we offer a Ph.D.; only about 20 percent of schools do); some are athletes (we have a scholarship for that); some are musicians (IIT has an independent music school on campus). Some are just architecture students. Everyone fits in.
Faculty
Perhaps the most important reason people come to study here is our faculty, the vast majority of whom are practicing architects and landscape architects. Whether winning important design awards (see Wiel Arets, Dirk Denison, John Ronan, Andy Tinucci), repairing our cities (see Martin Felsen, Maria Villalobos), or winning honors for their research and scholarship (see Sean Keller, Michelangelo Sabatino), our faculty are productive and engaged at all levels of the curriculum. The school reached its first international fame under the direction of Mies van der Rohe and his Bauhaus colleagues like Ludwig Hilbesheimer. But many other notable people have taught at the school over time, including Alfred Caldwell, James Ingo Fried, Myron Goldsmith, Helmut Jahn, Jeanne Gang, and AIA Gold Medalist Carol Ross Barney. Thanks to the generosity of the Morgenstern Family, recent visiting faculty include Iker Gil and Michel Rojkind, Wonne Ickx, Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg, Rozana Montiel, Gustavo Urtrabo, and Johnna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic of 5468796 Architecture.
Meet our faculty.
Board of Advisors
The College of Architecture benefits greatly from a volunteer advisory board of local architects, landscape architects, graduates of the program, prominent businesspeople, and folks who are supporters without any of the traditional connections. The activities of the Board of Advisors vary with its composition and the opportunities and challenges facing the college. What doesn’t change, however, is the board’s commitment to helping us provide students with the finest architectural education possible and then by helping them enter the profession, by creating a supportive environment for faculty research and professional endeavors, and by working to sustain the legacy and promise of the college. Their efforts have led directly to substantial enhancements of the college and all of its activities.
Meet our Board of Advisors.
Chicago
Chicago is the third-largest city in the U.S., but first in so many things: the first department store in the country, the first car radio, the first vacuum cleaner, the first zipper, dishwasher, opinion survey, deep dish pizza, brownie, and perhaps most importantly, the first television remote control. But beyond even those, Chicago is the nation's first city for architecture. American architecture was born here, first with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and then a second time with Mies van der Rohe and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. That legacy remains, from the city’s fabulous skyline to its miles of lakefront parks. Whether in the fine arts, sports, politics, literature, music, theater, food, or history, Chicago is top-rated. You will never run out of things to experience here.
Bronzeville
Illinois Institute of Technology is located in the South Side Chicago community of Bronzeville. Like many other Chicago neighborhoods, 19th-century Bronzeville was home to a variety of European settlers. But the neighborhood achieved its greatest prominence as a focus of the “Great Northward Migration” of Black Americans beginning after World War I. By World War II, Bronzeville was the cultural and economic center for Chicago’s Black community, with thriving music, literary, journalistic, and mercantile scenes. Racism and urban renewal drove a period of post-war economic and population decline, just as IIT was being created. But residents never gave up on the neighborhood, and today’s Bronzeville—now home to chic restaurants and galleries, museums, shops, and IIT—is an energetic story of rebirth.