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When Illinois Institute of Technology students return to the school's Chicago campus Aug. 25, they will find its modernist icon, S.R. Crown Hall, much modernized. Contractors this summer completed the most ambitious phase of a four-part, $15-million renovation to the Mies van der Rohe-designed structure that houses IIT's College of Architecture.
Crown Hall "is a beautiful building, but it's also a 50-year-old building in an extreme climate," says Rico Cedro, project architect with Krueck & Sexton, the Chicago firm overseeing the renovation. The 60,000-sq-ft building, considered one of the first examples of a clear span structure, has an antiquated mechanical system, inefficient lighting and until earlier this month, a deteriorating facade.
The goal...