The Architect's Newspaper, September 2020

Dirk Denison Architects renovates a Mies-designed dorm tower for the Illinois Institute of Technology

It’s been a big week for the college legacy of the late German-American modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; after the announcement that Indiana University Bloomington had begun work on an unrealized design of his for the campus, a team led by Dirk Denison Architects has completed the restoration of a nine-story, Mies-designed residential tower at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Kacek Hall, as it’s now known, was born as Bailey Hall in 1955 to hold “an influx of staff, faculty, and students with families, rather than younger, individual students with different lifestyles,” after World War II, according to the school. That presented a challenge, as the 74,000-square-foot building was in dire need of a retrofit to accommodate contemporary dorms (although, with the COVID pandemic ongoing, it might be a bit less pressing).

Check out the article here.