Buildings by Modernist master Mies van der Rohe have reached an age where they may require rehabilitation. Recent examples include alterations to the 1972 Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington, D.C., by Mecanoo and to the 1968 Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin by David Chipperfield. Both projects involved painstaking restoration. In Chicago, for the $70 million makeover of three dormitories, which form a quadrangle at the northeast corner of the Mies-designed campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), architect Dirk Denison took a different approach.

The exterior envelope of each building was almost completely demolished (above) and rebuilt (top). Photo © Tom Harris