If you could create your own architecture school, it would have to be a lot like the one at IIT. Here, we work daily in an architectural masterpiece—Mies van der Rohe’s S. R. Crown Hall—a place others experience only in textbooks. Our students train with award-winning architects and landscape architects. They’re supported by an experienced team of advisers and staff. They benefit from a vast network of professional connections, endowed research and travel assistance, nearly 170 student organizations and athletic teams, and one of the top fabrication centers anywhere. They study at a renowned university. And they live in Chicago, North America’s architectural capitol and a cultural, entertainment, and research powerhouse with few equals (its economic output alone is larger than all but 21 of the world’s countries). All of this, and what you see immediately below and on the rest of this website, means IIT students have nearly endless opportunities for engagement and success. We’d like to tell you more about it in person. To schedule a visit, or just be in touch, please click the link below or call us at 312.567.3260.

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There’s a big difference between seeing important buildings in a book and experiencing them in person. For those lucky enough to study in Chicago, that means having the opportunity to explore some of the most important buildings of the last two centuries. Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott store and the Auditorium building, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and Unity Temple, Bruce Graham’s Hancock and Sears Towers— they’re all here. So are buildings by Daniel Burnham, Bertram Goldberg, Myron Goldsmith, Helmut Jahn, Carol Ross Barney, Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando, and Jeanne Gang, to name only a few. And then there’s Mies van der Rohe, who designed our home, S. R. Crown Hall, 20 other buildings on IIT’s campus, the Farnsworth House, 860 and 880 Lake Shore Drive, the Federal Center, and many more—all in the Chicago area. There just isn’t anywhere else in the United States with that kind of architectural richness. And it’s yours for the taking as an IIT student.

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Learn more about Chicago architecture.

Our home, S. R. Crown Hall is perhaps the most beautiful—and renowned—structure ever built to house a school of architecture. Widely regarded as Mies van der Rohe’s greatest masterpiece—and one of the 20th century’s signal cultural achievements, Crown has housed the college since it opened in 1958. Its perfect proportions, radical structural system, and breathtaking spatial grandeur transcend building to become art. Yet we work in it every day, and it remains the teaching tool that Mies intended. Moreover, Crown anchors our famous campus, which Mies planned, and for which he designed and constructed more than 20 buildings. Three of those now belong to the College of Architecture—including the first building Mies completed in the U.S., which now houses our Fabrication Center, one of the largest and finest at any architecture program. The campus, a National Historic Landmark, also has contemporary buildings by Myron Goldsmith/SOM, Helmut Jahn, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, and our own current professor John Ronan. For architects especially, it is an educational environment like no other. 

Learn more about Crown Hall.
Learn more about the Fabrication Center.
Learn more about the Graham Resource Center.

IIT is the only school of architecture in the U.S. to house an internationally renowned architecture awards program, the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP). MCHAP celebrates outstanding projects in architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism across the Americas, and identifies exciting emerging design practices. The program brings the college widespread recognition. More importantly, it affords a wealth of activities that directly benefit our students, from lectures and panels featuring the world’s top designers, to studios and seminars taught by the most influential emerging architectural voices in North, Central and Southern America. MCHAP is unique to IIT, and by studying here, you can be a part of it.

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Our educational programs are all structured around a core of experiential learning, or put another way, learning by doing. IIT’s Bachelor of Architecture students, for instance, all complete a year of training in the Fabrication Center, which introduces them not only to the materials and methods of making, but to the idea that design and construction are advanced methods of research. Made@IIT is the college’s center for research in the materials, technologies, applications, and philosophies of design and construction. It includes our digital, analog, and materials research hubs, as well as our design/build program, which takes students to countries all around the world to build projects for communities in need (over the last few years, we have completed projects on four continents). Made@IIT works closely with the Fabrication Center’s staff to determine the direction of construction programs and equipment purchases (see the Fabrication Center for a list of tools and facilities), and with faculty and students to support research and production. Nearly every student in the college works with Made@IIT programs, which helps our students become job-ready when they graduate.