Dome

Frontal view showing typical structural bays; Alumni Hall was Mies van der Rohe's first classroom building on the campus. As he did in most of the academic buildings which followed, Mies used a module a bay 24 feet long, 24 feet wide and 12 feet high to allow for flexibility and efficiency in laying out classrooms, labs, and offices. The steel grid of the building's curtain wall suggests the actual steel structure within. City codes mandate that structural steel frames in buildings taller than one story be encased in fireproof material. A large two-story space on the north side, originally intended for use by the Naval ROTC unit, was divided and converted to other uses in 1972. Currently only one 24-foot bay remains a two-story space. Alumni Memorial Hall is home to IIT's Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering. Source: The Mies van der Rohe Society (IIT) [website]; http://www.mies.iit.edu/ (accessed 12/2/2007)