Illinois Institute of Technology - Integral / Lewis Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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lntroduction Reality i.s a majority opinion on a study in relativity. And in terms of this majority we must admit that the world and life of a college student has a high degree of unreality. The majority of men work and get paid in dollars, or rubles or yen, we work and re- ceive in return a hole punched in an IBM card. If we save up the holes and if they are of the right quality we can exchange them for a diploma someday. Our parents, small brothers, and neighborhood friends do not always understand why we put in such long hours for such an intangible record. Sometimes we wonder ourselves. These are the times when we become aware of the relative unreality of our situation. When speaking of reality, one is usually forced to speak of truth. This is where a yearbook comes in. A yearbook is supposed to give a true, accurate record of a year in col- lege. Without getting into arguments over chickens and eggs, that's what it does, more or less. Yet there are those who will maintain that truth and accuracy are not synonymous. Accuracy is what you have in photographs, or when you report the score of a basketball game or list the members of Tau Beta Pi. But a seeker after truth would hardly find it in these. He might hnd it by looking through the veil of abstractions. For him and others like him are provided certain groups of words, abstract paintings, and certain photo- graphs, in the hope that he may find that which he seeks. College being unreal as it is, and abstractions being unreal as they are, we hardly expect this truth to be of the univer- sal variety. Thus we do not expect outsiders to understand all or to sympathize with all that is here, a yearbook is a partially factual, partially abstract, mostly esoteric represen- tation of a somewhat unreal situation. Nevertheless we have undertaken to represent this way of life and represent it we must, come what may. Since this way of life is somewhat complex, it is here divided into four main elements with psychological-sociological sounding names-environment, moti- vation, escape, and status. Upon arriving at Illinois Tech, we are confronted by an environment which is to shape our world from the outside. For many this environment is not much diferent from the rest of the city they have always known, for some it is a strangely diferent sort of place. The student has to adjust to his island with its el trains, new glass-brick-steel build- ings, old stone-wood-brick buildings, Federal Street wind tunnel, and surrounding neigh- borhood. He has to adjust also to less physical but no less environmental conditions, such as life in a fraternity house, dinner at the dining hall, and a tuition-raising admin- istration. While adjusting he may wonder wherefore he came: and the psychologist would an- swer, motivation. Motivated he must have been and motivated he is-toward some vague goal by some half dream of one day becoming less potential. These vague goals, hazy dreams of a place in the real, the outside, the majority-rule world, are different for each, but we all have them. They color our world from inside, they give us perspective and occasionally moral support. They determine whether we be an engineer or architect, an activity man or a scholar. But once we're here, we find it necessary to get away-to escape. To get away from the pressure, the frustration, the squeak of a slide rule and the smell of an organic lab- to get away becomes a goal too. So we flock to the Baltic, the Deuces or the Pub for a nitecap, we go skiing when it's cold and to the beach when it's warmer, we play cards, shoot pool, drink cofee, go to parties and occasional dances or maybe just sleep, always aware that soon we must return. Even while escaping we notice that we're still here. Only as our status changes from wide-eyed freshman to graduating senior religiously counting the days, do we really begin to get away. Finally the count is zero, we walk across a wide stage, receive our passport to the outside, go through the doors and we're gone. But there will always be those who are left, those still living in the land of Oz. The faces change from year to year but the way of life remains remarkably unchanged. 5

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In retrospect it seems natural that Mies van der Rohe came to America and Chicago in 1938 Since the pioneering work of the architects and builders of the Chicago School in the 1880 s time had been lost as a result of the disruptive and debilitating influence of the Columbian Ilxposi tion of 1893 Architecture had been wandering about in a world of historical revisalism It ne gated the lessons of jenney Root and Sullivan it denied having any relationship to or logic il outgrowth of the structural methods which marked the epoch It seems natural that Mies should be asked to come here, because in his every work is the essence of the spirit of the Chicago School of architecture so long gone unrealized. But not only was architecture generally without direction or substance, architectural education to was struggling along with curricula equally uncertain and nebulous. It was into this anachronistic cultural situation that Mies came as Director of the Department of Architecture of what was then known as Armour Institute of Technology. Even before coming to this country he was world renowned as an architect and educator, in the latter capacity as the last Director of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, before it was closed by the Third Reich. In fact, it was the hopelessness of the conditions in Germany at that time which prompted Mies to accept the invitation to come to America, as he has said, not to escape but to work, to remain productive. The idea of Henry T. Heald, then President of the Institute, to develop an important school was the challenge Mies needed. In fulfilling this challenge he demonstrated his genius to penetrate and reside within a cul- ture foreign in many ways to his own, and through his architecture to manifest the technological nature of that culture, and its spirit, in physical form. It is this quality of vision, this mind free from parochialism or the fear of meeting new circumstances, that especially signalize his free spirit. To this his architecture and his teaching are vigorous evidence. His philosophy is one of seeking the very essence of the problem of architecture, its pertinent facts and the meaning of these facts. It is this return to a search for and an understanding of basic principles that characterizes Mies' teaching and distinguishes his significant contribution to the world of architecture. In both areas he has brought Illinois Tech to the attention of architects, planners, engineers, and artists of the world. To his students and associates he has shown a way of work which, reject- ing all random aesthetic speculation, results in an architecture, as Mies himself has said, rooted in the practical, extending through all degrees of value into the realm of pure art. He has created a vocabulary with which they can develop their architectural identities. To Illinois Tech he has given the nucleus of a campus, the architecture of which is the most evident symbol that could stand for a center of learning, the symbol of architectural truth. . . . E . 4 I . . . , . J . . . . . W . . 4 .- I . . Y . - J J C