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The El train may be an emblem of Chicago--ugly, noisy, pragmatic--but for decades it has divided the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, clattering across acres of parking lots. For Helmut Jahn, who came to IIT in the 1960s, it was his campus lifeline, the way to get to where he always wanted to be--the Loop and its towers hovering Oz-like over the flat plane of the city.
He took the El from IIT in 1967 to join the Chicago firm of C.F. Murphy, then run by Gene Summers, who would become a mentor. Invited to compete more than 30 years later for an IIT dormitory project backing up on the El, Jahn saw not an environmental menace to be alleviated, but an opportunity to pay homage to a work of civil engineering--however aesthetically challenged--that had meant a great deal to him.
Jahn's El love did not get him the job. Donna Robertson, the Dean of IIT's school of architecture (page 264), and a leader in the rejuvenation of its neglected physical plant, explains: "When we reached the end of Helmut's presentation, and we saw that terrace space on the roof and what kind of place it could be, that was it." She refers to the decks carved out of the curving arc of the roof atop the five-story structure (page 134). Though the elegance and power of the IIT buildings by Mies van der Rohe and other like-minded architects still commands respect today, the sober image the old campus presented did not exactly promise a joyous student life. Both Jahn's State Street Village, housing 367 students, and the adjacent McCormick Tribune Center (page 122) address the student experience directly, though in almost completely opposed ways.
Both structures signal a rebirth for the campus and the neighborhood. IIT has hunkered as Chicago's South Side spiraled into deep poverty. Today, the turnaround in the city and...