“Joinery” poses as both a useful analogy in which to bring numerous things together, as well as a basic architectural reality that necessitates a coming together of materials.  At the scale of community, the project helps to join the historically alien campus of Illinois Tech into the broader context of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood.  Academic and public programming provide the foundations for this new, multi-dimensional model of college building, in which the institution invites the participation of the community.

Expressed formally at the largest scale of plan, the building shapes itself like a Japanese joint. The building creates the positive intervention on the site, in which its chiseled shape defines its negative in the countered exterior spaces. At smaller scales and also in accordance to a conceptual “joinery”, the architecture contains a tectonic character in which the exchange of forces is felt differently in respective materials. Deep beams for example over the atrium space, suggest how they handle the extreme stresses of a 24-foot cantilever over the CTA platform. There is a similar material reaction to gravity that occurs at the suspended walkways, in which slim and tenuous cables reveal the delicate transfer of tensile forces from the beam above. The mechanical analogies continue throughout the project. The central atrium space for example, provides the conceptual hinge of the project; as prominent movement vectors and programs torque around this choreographed moment.

Completed with: Aron Johannsson