Alumni Memorial Hall

(1945-46, Mies van der Rohe, with Holabird and Root)

Alumni Memorial was Mies van der Rohe's first classroom building on the campus. The double-height armory space, originally intended to house ROTC and the architecture program, was converted to other uses in 1972, and part of it was divided into two floors. Alumni Memorial's structural steel frame is expressed clearly on its facades, but the actual structural steel is not exposed. What we see is a metaphor for the structure; city codes mandate that steel frames be encased in fireproof material. As in most of Mies's other campus buildings, the vertical steel bands that run down the surface of the building simply represent the actual supports in the wall behind them. Mies reveals this metaphor by cutting the bands off just above the ground.

Alumni Memorial houses classrooms, labs, and offices for civil engineering and environmental engineering.