McCormick Tribune Campus Center

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) is a building on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center opened September 30, 2003. It was the first building designed by architect Rem Koolhaas within the United States. It is a single-story 110,000-square-foot (10,000 m²) building.

Design of the building began in 1997 during an international architectural design competition hosted by the school. Finalists included Peter Eisenman, Helmut Jahn, Zaha Hadid, Kazuyo Sejima, and the winner, Rem Koolhaas. He worked with Chicago architecture firm Holabird & Root, especially on structural engineering issues.

The site was previously a heavily used student parking lot with tracks of the elevated train passing overhead. Koolhaas tracked movements of students across the lot, which led to diagonal passageways as the center's interior thoroughfares. Campus functions which had been spread around campus, such as the student bookstore and a post office, were relocated between these pathways. They also connected to a new cafeteria in a renovated 1953 Commons building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. A major design challenge was the noise of the public transit tracks passing over the lot. The tube's support structure is completely independent of the building's, to minimize vibration passing between them.

Budget constraints precluded this, however. Original designs included a bowling alley, basketball courts and a skate park, but these were removed from the final design, supposedly because of security concerns.

The original project budget was $25 million, but the ultimate cost was $48 million. However, the university wanted an architecturally significant building to add onto its original main campus, which is home to the densest concentration of buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the world.

A computer model of the train tube was used in the splash screen for AutoCAD 2008.

The building, commonly referred to as "MTCC" by students, faculty, and staff, serves as a central hub for student life on campus. As of December 2010^[update], it housed the campus mail room, dining facilities, a coffee shop, 7-11 convenience store, the Campus Information Center, and many meeting spaces and offices.

Picture Gallery of McCormick Tribune Campus Center