Responses by Bud Rodecker, partner and design director, Span.
Background: We were tasked with redesigning the IIT College of Architecture website while simultaneously evolving the school’s visual identity. Our goal was to honor its modernist legacy while reflecting its forward-thinking ethos. We sought to showcase how the school seamlessly integrates conceptual exploration with hands-on, practical application. The new identity and website were designed to engage a diverse audience, including prospective and current students, faculty, alumni, and the global architectural community.
Design thinking: We approached the identity with the goal of capturing the essence of IIT’s modernist lineage. The website’s design draws direct inspiration from S. R. Crown Hall, the home of the architecture school. Designed by Mies van der Rohe and recognized as a national historical landmark, Crown Hall is a modernist masterpiece that embodies clarity, minimalism and structural innovation. Its open-plan interior and transparent facade reflect principles that define Mies’s legacy.
A key feature of Crown Hall is its 2:1 grid pattern, which extends from its structural framework down to the floor tiles. We mirrored this logic in the website’s design, using a 2:1 grid system to determine the placement of every element, ensuring a sense of order and coherence.
Typography also plays a crucial role in linking IIT’s past and present. We incorporated Neue Galerie, a revival of Mies’s Allzweck typeface, alongside The Future, creating a typographic connection between the school’s modernist roots and its forward-thinking mission.
Ultimately, every design decision was guided by a balance of intellectual rigor and hands-on practicality, reflecting IIT’s “shut up and build” ethos.
Challenges: As with any institution, IIT College of Architecture has multiple stakeholders who hold a vested interest in how the website looks and functions. Balancing these perspectives to ensure the site effectively serves a broad audience was a significant challenge. At the same time, we needed to translate a revered architectural history into a compelling digital experience relevant to today’s users. Preserving van der Rohe’s philosophy was important, as it’s so central to the institution’s identity; however, we also needed to look to the future.
Favorite details: We’re especially proud of how the website conveys the experience of being in S. R. Crown Hall, imparting a sense of floating through subtle design elements. When we showed it to faculty, their reaction was simply “This is IIT,” confirming that the digital environment truly reflects the school’s essence. I’m also a fan of the dark mode setting on the website. It’s a small thing, but I love how it changes the whole experience.
New lessons: Every project offers a learning curve. Delving into the college’s visual history—from its time as the Armour Institute of Technology—revealed a consistent typographic narrative. Translating that legacy into a renewed identity for a contemporary audience was both a discovery process and a defining achievement.
Visual influences: Our foremost inspiration was van der Rohe’s modernist architecture. We also drew from Bauhaus principles and IIT’s historical use of Futura in the mid-20th century. Beyond that, Chicago’s broader architectural heritage informed our approach, reflecting the city’s pivotal role in shaping American architecture.
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