At the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, a building sits underneath a giant tube, through which the Chicago “L” train travels. We are not talking Youtube, but an actual structure in the shape of a tube, atop a building, with a speeding train going through it. (Although there is this good Youtube video about the structural Tube by Koolhaas.)The tube is over 530 feet long, and was built from 2-5am, so that the train service would not be interrupted by it’s construction.
The architect, Rem Koolhaas, is from the Netherlands. His architecture firm, OMA, has done some spectacular designs all over the globe. Koolhaas has written a bunch of books which are crazy expensive and sort of difficult – but interesting to look at and to ignite a conversation. Here is an example of one of his books, titled [amazon_link id=”1885254865″ target=”_blank” ]S M L XL[/amazon_link], co-written by Bruce Mau.
We recommend that you take a ride on the Green Line of the Chicago L. Make sure that you look out the window as you go through the Exelon Tube at IIT – don’t be looking at your phone and for sure don’t be looking at Youtube – or you will miss the Tube.
Kanye West hired OMA to design a theater. Kanye talks about his ideas related to design here.