Saturday, August 27th, IIT will host a day-long festival to mark the reopening of Mies van der Rohe's 1956 S.R. Crown Hall, closed this summer to undergo a complete restoration. A full day of family-friendly activities is being promised, including tours, a performance of "The Glass House," June Finfer's play on the creation of Mies's Farnsworth House, and "some of Chicago's top bands, all under a tent on Crown Hall's expansive lawn." Times are from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Location is 3360 S. State Street on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus designed by the master, himself. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, call 312/567.5014 or go to the website.
I have an unpublished piece on bird collisions that I should probably put up on my web site. There's no evidence that Mies hated birds or other living things. The development of the glass wall was, in fact, a way of bringing nature back into buildings. As always, unintended consequences result. Especially in the case of Chicago, which is on a key migratory flight path, large numbers, perhaps millions, of birds die flying into glass, which has become a potently lethal, non-living predator. Thankfully, today architects like Jeanne Gang, with her Ford Calument Environmental Center, are coming up with new ways of preserving transparency without making it a deathtrap for flying birds.
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