El crown hall. Contexto y proyecto

Abstract

The article showcases the Crown Hall building in the educational and architectural context of Mies van der Rohe. It reviews his beginnings in the Bauhaus with his first intervention in an educational space for the Bauhaus of Berlin in 1932, as well as his sojourn to the United States, and the architectural approaches to the IIT campus and the Crown Hall project. The text touches on the study of the planning process for the Crown Hall, analysing the evolution of its architectural conception, through the different versions of the project. The article covers the transition from the first architectural approaches for the IIT campus buildings, planned by Mies, to the approach of the large unitary space of the Crown Hall. This project can be appreciated from the increasing importance of the structure, the clarity of construction and the use of steel and glass as the only materials that form the image of the building, and the flexible and unitary character of the space. Finally, reference is made to the concept of the "universal space" in the architecture of Mies, as an abstract concept that surpasses those of flexibility of use or spatial unit, suggesting, by way of reflection, the main variables that would define the Miesian universal space.