High and Lowrise Building Complex, Perspective Sketch

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s work for the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology continued through the late 1940s and early 1950s, and led to the development of new building types that he would later employ for independent commissions. One of these new models joined low- and high-rise buildings, a combination he first employed on the east side of the IIT campus, where he constructed three mid-rise dormitory buildings and the low-rise Commons Building and campus chapel. Mies’s interest in this type can be seen in this early sketch, which suggests the more monumental buildings of his Chicago Federal Center complex, constructed between 1958 and 1974.