With a history of design excellence and technical expertise, an unmatched professional studio curriculum, and inspiring surroundings, IIT College of Architecture is one of the most respected by architectural firms nationwide. The College offers a five-year Bachelor of Architecture program, five different Master's programs, and the Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture.
IIT’s NAAB-accredited College of Architecture draws strength from its Chicago setting, its Mies van der Rohe heritage, and award-winning faculty. College of Architecture alumni have shaped the skyline of Chicago. Many of the city’s soaring heights and innovative spaces were designed or engineered by the College of Architecture alumni and faculty. The College’s Chicago setting enriches architectural education by exposing the complexities of the urban environment, including issues of urban planning, affordable housing, transportation planning, historic preservation, adaptive reuse and other trends that are transforming the city and field today. An interaction with Chicago’s many architecture and construction firms provides an unmatched living laboratory for students.
IIT’s prominence is intertwined with the architectural and cultural legacy of Chicago, recognized internationally for its heritage of leadership in the architectural profession. Modern architecture began in Chicago in the 1890s with the groundbreaking work of creative pioneers including Sullivan, Burnham, Jenny, Root and Wright. Their fiercely independent style led these world-renowned “Chicago School” architects to establish the school that became IIT’s College of Architecture. Their legacy: a profound architecture and a school taught by master architects.
Mies van der Rohe extended IIT’s commitment to architectural excellence when he arrived in Chicago in 1938. His renewed curriculum reflected the revolutionary influence of the German Bauhaus school. Unifying art and technology, his vision found expression in the new campus he designed for IIT – a campus selected in 1976 by the AIA national membership as one of the top 200 architectural achievements in the U.S. Mies’s masterpiece, S.R. Crown Hall, recognized as one of the most significant buildings of the 20th century, continues to house IIT’s College of Architecture—Mies’s “home of ideas and adventures.” The College of Architecture also inhabits 3410 S. State Street and the Minerals and Metals Building, Mies’s first building in the United States.
IIT’s long history of excellence in architecture continues today. Two noteworthy buildings opened on Main Campus in 2003—the campus center designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, and the State Street Village residences by revered Chicago architect Helmut Jahn.
