The takeover of ID by IIT under the fierce opposition of Mies

This article appeared originally in the issue #21, November 21, 2006 of engageID, the Institute of Design's student newsletter

In 1944, when the second World War was close to its end, the US government passed the G.I. Bill of Rights in order to support anyone that served in the army services. This bill, among other forms of compensation, had the mission to provide for college or vocational education for returning veterans in the hopes of smoothing their reincorporation to society. This measure had the effect in many universities in the US of causing them to grow very rapidly in the following years. Among these schools there was a recently founded school born from the merger between the Lewis Institute and the Armour Institute: the Illinois Institute of Technology.

A few years later, in 1949, IIT was considering merging with other schools to expand its academic offering and accommodate new students. The Institute of Design was one of these targeted schools. In that time, Serge Ivan Chermayeff was its president, filling the place of the founder Moholy-Nagy following his death from leukemia in 1946.

IIT had been pondering the merge for some time, but before making any decision about the merger, Henry T.Heald, president at that time of the IIT, wanted to hear the opinion of the IIT Dean of Architecture, the person who would ultimately have to integrate the school into IIT. Mies van der Rohe had held that position since 1938 when he emigrated from Germany. He agreed to join the Armour and Art Institute of Chicago’s architecture program on the condition that he would design and build the new campus that was planned for the school on the south side of Chicago. President Heald, looking for an informed opinion, wrote a letter to Mies asking about how he felt about incorporating the Institute of Design into IIT.

On March 5th, 1949 Mies responded by letter to President Heald and his words could not have been more honest and bruising. Not only he disapproved the takeover, but he also expressed his strong personal opinions about ID and Chermayeff. In his own words the integration between both schools could never succeed because “our school is based on discipline and the Institute of Design exists on extravaganza”.

His opinion about ID’s director was not much better. Mies stressed his refusal to work with Chermayeff and he even threatened to resign from his position if Chermayeff became dean of the department of Design. The relationship between Mies and ID’s founder Moholy Nagy had been less than good since both emigrated from Germany in the late 1930’s. Apparently the relationship and regard of the then ID director was even worse: total disapproval.

In the end, despite all of Mies’ contrary opinions, the acquisition happened. But obviously Mies wanted to have the last say and have his own small personal revenge. At the beginning of the 1950s, as part of the design of the IIT campus in the south side, Mies envisioned the building where the Department of Architecture and Design would reside: the magnificent S.R. Crown Hall. The way spaces would be distributed was clear for him: the College of Architecture would occupy the high ceiling and luminous first floor and the Institute of Design would occupy the poorly lighted basement.

Ironies of history and 50 years later things have changed. ID does not inhabit the basement of S.R. Crown Hall anymore and most importantly ID is now the jewel of the crown as former IIT President Lew Collen’s once acknowledged.

At the instructional level, ID has also gone through several transformations. These years have seen how ID has completely transformed itself from a school with a modernist aesthetic and tradition into one of the few design schools that currently use design methods and tools to rigorously approach problems. Quite a far cry from Mies’s perceived extravaganza.

Full letter from Mies to President Heald