Wiel Arets Inaugurated as Dean of IIT College of Architecture -"Making Metropolis", Chicago, March 13th, 2013

CHICAGO, March 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Wiel Arets, an internationally acclaimed Dutch architect, has been in September 2012 appointed as Dean and tenured professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) College of Architecture (CoA) in Chicago. Arets will be invested with the 'Rowe Family College of Architecture Dean Endowed Chair' on March 13th, 2013, and began his leadership of the CoA academic and research programs in August 2012. Originally under the direction of German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1938-1958, Arets is the second European architect to be appointed to this distinguished position. Mies van der Rohe secured Chicago's place in the history of modern architecture with his Lake Shore Drive apartment towers, one the most important post WWII high-rise prototypes, the Farnsworth House, and the IIT CoA main building, S.R Crown Hall. Arets' inaugural address as Dean will take place in Crown Hall during the international symposium on March 13^th, 2013, presenting his vision -'Rethinking Metropolis' - for the school's new era.

Architecture critic Kenneth Frampton: "The appointment of the distinguished Dutch architect Wiel Arets to the directorship of the IIT College of Architecture stands to inaugurate an entirely new epoch in the evolution of this institution-most surely because Arets has long since demonstrated his prowess as both an architect and an educator… The pedagogical shift inherent in this appointment opens the prospect of a reinvigorated IIT as an objective Bauschule for the twenty-first century."

Wiel Arets is an architect, educator, industrial designer, theorist, and urbanist known for his academic progressive research and hybrid design solutions. His architecture and design practice, Wiel Arets Architects (WAA), has studios throughout Europe and has been nominated for the European Union's celebrated 'Mies van der Rohe Award' on numerous occasions. WAA currently has projects under construction throughout Europe and Japan: the Allianz Headquarters in Zürich, Switzerland, Amsterdam Centraal Station's IJhal, the Schwäbischer Verlag in Ravensburg, Germany, and the A' House in Tokyo. His many distinguished projects include the library of the University of Utrecht, the Academy of Art & Architecture in Maastricht, the Euroborg Stadium in Groningen, and the Hedge House in Wijlre, the Netherlands.

NOWNESS, the school's first publication under Arets' direction, will be presented at the symposium in Chicago on March 13^th, 2013 at 6pm.

SOURCE Wiel Arets Architects