Alfred Swenson and his late wife, Pao-Chi Chang, were drawn to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) for one reason: Mies van der Rohe. Both studied architecture there under Mies during the 1950s. The Modern master’s influence would inform their work for decades, first while practicing at larger firms like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where Chang worked, and later when the couple started their own studio together. After all those years designing public buildings, the Chicago-based architects finally had an opportunity to design a home for themselves when they purchased a 10-acre plot in northern Illinois, a few miles from the Wisconsin border.

The design for the 1,500-square-foot weekend retreat—which the architects called Casina after the Latin word for a small cabin—emerged slowly over several years. Once built, the steel-and-glass structure was an unexpected sight among the barns and silos that dot the surrounding corn fields. And while at first glance Casina appears as a temple to Modernism, much stronger influences—both cultural and cosmic—were at play.