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Not many years ago, the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology lay in disrepair. Just east of the Dan Ryan Expressway, streets and parking lots dominated the pockmarked south side site originally designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and landscape architect Alfred Caldwell. The elevated, or 'L' train, bisected the campus, and declining plant material contributed to a seemingly blighted area.
Working with a team to create a master plan for the campus, Chicago's Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape Architecture sought to renew Mies' vision of a campus characterized by author Phyllis Lambert as flowing 'like water around stones into the open and compressed spaces created by buildings sliding past one another'.
Though Caldwell never developed a landscape master plan for the IIT campus, Schaudt set about to restore his concept of horizontality and penchant for using native plants. Along State Street, on-street parking was eliminated, allowing space for a reinterpretation of Caldwell's landscape; the widened parkways and new median enabled Schaudt to connect the two sides of the campus.
In keeping with Caldwell's preference for native plantings, Schaudt's team created a dense placement of shade and flowering trees to define IIT's central open space around Crown Hall. Topographically, the sloped perimeter of the field creates a sense of enclosure and provides places for limestone slab and lawn seating while the center of the field invites activity. Adjacent to the campus' new dormitories, Schaudt created a courtyard bosque of white-barked birch trees to contract with the plaza's dark pavement.
While still a work in progress, Schaudt's work begins to fulfill the legacy of Mies and Caldwell.
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