Famed architect’s 70-year-old vision realized on IU campus

By CALI LICHTER

The new shared central facility for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design hosted an open house Friday after finishing construction after three years.

Unlike other buildings on campus, the space was constructed using a design by famous German-American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from the 1950s.

The building, situated on the corner of Seventh Street and Eagleson Avenue, was originally commissioned by the fraternity Pi Lamda Phi to be its new residence at IU in 1952. But by 1957, the funds could not be raised and the blueprints were lost to time.

In 1985, the plans were found by a former Pi Lamda Phi president’s widow and passed amongst alums.

In 2013, a former brother, IU alumnus, and donor Sidney Eskenazi informed IU about the Mies plans in his possession. After years of planning, in August 2019, IU announced that the Mies design would be constructed to use as a shared central facility for the Eskenazi School thanks to a $20 million donation from Sidney and Lois Eskenazi.

Founding dean and professor of the Eskenazi School Peg Faimon said that before the Mies van der Rohe building, all the disciplines for the school were spread out around campus.

“But there isn’t one building that’s sort of a central hub for the school, that doesn’t belong to a particular discipline,” said Faimon. “And so that’s really the function of this building, to be the central meeting space, working space, formation space.”

The building hosts offices for Faimon and other Eskenazi faculty along with breakout rooms, classrooms, and conference spaces.

“We can have events, activities, classes for different disciplines, people can work in this space outside of class,” said Faimon.

Vice President of capital planning and facilities at IU Tom Morrison said that university officials were wary about having a design like this since it wasn’t like anything else on IUs campus. But after talks, they came to the realization that that’s okay.

“We had to be very comfortable that it would be such an important piece of architecture, that everybody would look at it and quickly get past the fact that it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the palette and it really is a piece of art,” said Morrison.

He said that the glass walls help integrate the building into the campus. Not only can students and faculty see people walking and cars driving by outside, but people on the outside can see in as well.

At the end of the day, the building fits in with the look of the Eskenazi School, and Morrison hopes people will feel as though it was always there.

“You will have guests who come back here who are alums from 10, 20, 30 years ago, and they will come back, and they will look at a building and go, ‘I remember when that building as here when I was here,’ and I know the building wasn’t here when they were here,” said Morrison. “And the same thing is going to happen to this [building].”

The open house marks the official opening of the Mies van der Rohe Building for student and faculty use.