Carr Memorial Chapel

Robert F. Carr Memorial Chapel of St. Savior, colloquially known as the "God Box", is a one-story brick building near the intersection of Michigan Avenue and 32nd Street on the Illinois Institute of Technology's (IIT) campus in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is the only religious structure designed by German-American modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who at the time was the director of the School of Architecture. Bishop Wallace Conkling of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago proposed the construction of the chapel in the late 1940s with the notion that it would be a "great educational project of the atomic age." IIT's religious and spiritual organizations currently use the "God Box" as a "center of campus spiritual life" for meditation, weekly services, and other meetings.

Bishop Conkling presented his proposal to fund and build a chapel complex with a meeting hall and parish house at IIT to bridge the gap between education and religion after World War II. He believed the location of the chapel would spur students to "search for virtue while becoming proficient in the search for things."

IIT's administrators selected influential modernist architect Mies van der Rohe to design the chapel. Before the chapel, Mies had already designed other IIT buildings, whose designs often had to be modified to accommodate university budget cuts. The original proposal in 1949 consisted of two buildings: a chapel and a parish house. Mies' initial designs consisted of a 3,000 sq ft (280 m2) chapel and a 2,300 sq ft (210 m2) parish house. Interestingly, his perspective sketch has a "steel superstructure bracketed with opaque sidewalls." After university administrators decreased funding, the design excluded the parish house, although the steel frame was still in the plan. Once well into the construction phase, administrators still felt that the design would result in exorbitant costs. Mies reduced the chapel to a 2,220 sq ft (206 m2) building with load-bearing bricks, instead of steel, that held steel beams to support a concrete roof. Recovered designs also reveal missing aspects such as companion pieces to the crucifix and white-oak pews. Despite the financial setbacks

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