I previously wrote about here (scroll down) about the plan in Chicago to tear down a building by Mies van der Rohe, in order to put up a Metra train station. The station could easily be erected just a few feet away, just across the street - on vacant land - thus preserving for posterity a work by one of the greatest architects in history.

I'd like to show you the drawings for this project by Mies, scanned from the published Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Archive in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. You see the care he put into this with these highly detailed drawings for this modest structure. They're stamped with Mies's name.


Looks to me like great care went into this. You're going to tear this down when you could easily put the train station on vacant land right across the street?

Remember, Mies and his office didn't build a lot. As we saw in the recent exhibition "Mies in America," they would spend months on the tiniest detail that many of us might not even see, but they believed that that was "Architecture," and that we would be affected whether we knew it or not.


My eyes aren't good, does this say,
"MIES VAN DER ROHE ARCHITECT CHICAGO, ILL." ?




Some articles on this issue show a bad photo of just the "simple" building and say it can go. Here is the most important view, again.


See how the Test Cell (lower left) begins the ensemble? It is just the beginning of the symphony that is Mies's design, his master plan, for the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). This was always supposed to be a "background" building. It was always supposed to to lead you in to the campus. It is not a "destination" building. As you see above, it is part of a whole.

The view above would be lost forever.

Some of the same people saying it's okay to tear this down say that not every building should call attention to itself. They're right. Good neighborhoods and places are ensembles, made up of great buildings that knock you out, and others that calm you down, rest your eye a bit, and prepare you to take in the great monuments. The latter is this Test Cell by Mies van der Rohe.

Some say the Test Cell can be torn down because it was not built to Mies's specifications. It looks close enough to me to say save it. The Test Cell was there for almost twenty years while Mies was alive. and working for much of that time on the IIT campus. Mies's acknowledged masterpiece Crown Hall was not built exactly to his original specs (it was going to be taller.) And what we already have there is a lot closer to what he wanted than this station that doesn't fit in, and doesn't acknowledge architecturally that IIT is one of the great sites in Architecture history. And the more complete IIT is, with the highest amount of integrity, the better for all.

A critic said, "It is not an A or a B building." He gave no comment - as an architecture critic - on what will replace it. Which is this:


by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Chicago office. Is that an A or a B? Or worse? It would be allright on the empty, vacant land directly across the street, literally a few feet to the south.

As planned, it will destroy that great, historic, Modernist view I showed above. The view up that street, with Mies left and right, you walk it, and when you get to the end you find one of Mies' great ninety-degree turns, which he used so effectively to take you into the Farnsworth House, into his 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, into the Barcelona Pavilion. The well thought out entry sequence, taking you through ninety degree turns, takes you out of your world and into a new world. Here, when you get to the end of this alley, you make a ninety degree turn and you see - Crown Hall.

That's partly why this little Test Cell is modest. To prepare you for that. It's like Frank Lloyd Wright's little entryway at the Guggenheim Museum, before you enter the great spiral space. Could we tear that down and still get the full effect of Wright's atrium? No, you need context, you need comparison, you need to move through the architect's work, transition slowly, leave your world behind, enter a complete work of art.

Mies does this masterfully, for example at the Farnsworth House. You make your turns through the woods, before you reach the house. At the stairs, you put first just one foot on the travertine, you are slowly leaving the world and the past. Take another step and two feet and your body is on the travertine, but you are still surrounded by the outdoors. Then, as you move forward, you're on a larger, more encompassing platform of travertine, but still surrounded by outdoors. Move forward a bit more and you're under his roof. You must make one of those famous ninety-degree turns, pass through a thin wall of glass, and you're "inside." Now you have a floor underneath you, a roof above, and glass walls around you. Mies does not give it to you all at once. He could have turned the front door towards the driveway instead of away from it and he could have made the journey into the house more direct. That's not Mies's way. We ought to keep his procession to Crown Hall, his procession onto the IIT campus, so we can appreciate it, enjoy it and learn from it.

Especially when there are blocks of empty space directly to the south, where that train station could go. Then we'd have a train stop at IIT, and more of Mies van der Rohe's work. What is so difficult about that? Where is the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency? Again, the photo of the land - just across the street! Put the train station there.


.