September Field Trip

Part of our studio field trip was to visit the IIT McCormick Tribune Campus by Rem Koolhaas/ OMA. The task was to design a student center on a very tricky site, and not many architects dared to take on the challenge. Rem aimed to revitalize the IIT campus with the building and the same time maintain a design scheme that corresponds with Mies' urban planning. My studio classmate Stephen Ferroni recommended me an article written by Koolhaas that talks about the situation, see the link below:

https://aplust.net/blog/miestakes0/

OMA did a series of study on students' travel pattern on the site, and ultimately implement that into the floor plan. Instead of stacking up all the programs, they decided to lay out the spaces and use the existing terrain to create the multi-level layers. 

Diagram from OMA

Floor plan from OMA

He then used a single roof to unify the whole building, and put the train rail on top of it. The form of the roof was then being compressed and deformed by the railway to express the heaviness and lightness through structure. The building was designed during the prime era of Deconstructivism, and you can see all the characteristics of it. 

He used different colors, materials, and levels to separate and highlight different programs. 

The legendary stair-slope! The space is contructed by series of line patterns. 

I love how Koolhaas 'de-institutionalized' the student center with program fluidity. The programs are not contained within a vicinity, but have certain flexibility and continuation between each other. 

The small deformation on the roof showing the heaviness of the railway on top of the roof.

Koolhaas used a lot of economical materials for this project for experimentations. Some are reflective and some are translucent. He applied these materials not only for the exterior and interior, but also on the furnitures. There are some explorations on signage and infographics through out the whole building as well. A lot of the infographics have heavy influence on Bjarke Ingels' projects later on, including the website of BIG and some exterior facade explorations. 

Axon drawing from IIT

A similar yet different project from the same era would be the "Prada Epicenter New York". The project timeline is from 2000 to 2001, which compares to the McCormick Center is from 1997 to 2003. I feel like the idea of program fluidity and some design languages can be found in the Prada Epicenter project as well. 

'Prada Epicenter New York' Photo from OMA

'Prada Epicenter New York' Photo from OMA