An L train emerges from the tube above the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology. (Chronicle photograph)

Most architects and people who appreciate architecture are probably familiar with the story of a small town on the northern coast of Spain called Bilbao. Once an industrial city, Bilbao had little hope for economic development 20 years ago.

Everything changed, almost overnight, with the opening of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Anchored by this widely heralded building, the city has become an international travel destination and has enjoyed an economic renaissance. The term coined to describe this transformation is “Bilbao effect.”

Can something similar happen on a university campus? Can a high-profile architect produce a masterpiece that doesn’t just appeal to big-name donors who want to put their names on a fresh and exciting design? Can a building ultimately attract students, faculty members, and—dare I say it—tourists?

I say Yes—to varying degrees.

To create such an effect, the building must not only stand out, but also display something integral about the institution, something so integral that it allows the building to withstand the initial flurry of reaction by architecture critics and other media gadflies. It’s a difficult balancing act: Make a bold statement, but retain the architectural context and functionality that a campus must have.

Two celebrated examples that haven’t worked quite as well as their designers probably had hoped for are Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, designed by Peter Eisenman, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Stata Center, designed by Mr. Gehry. You could argue that the Bilbao Effect has worked for each of these institutions, bringing donations, acclaim, and tourism. But the extent to which both structures have also disappointed at least some of those who work in them is well documented—so well documented that we don’t need to discuss it here.

Another campus building by a high-profile architect, however, demonstrates that the Bilbao Effect can work on many levels. It’s the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago.

The institute’s campus was famous to start with, of course, because the great Modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe not only taught at IIT but also designed a number of its buildings, including the iconic S.R. Crown Hall. About the time the Bilbao museum was being completed, IIT held an international design competition for a new campus center that was won by Rem Koolhaas. (Full disclosure: I worked at the time for Mr. Koolhaas’s firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture.)

What shocked people then—and continues to surprise visitors today—was Mr. Koolhaas’s decision to build the campus center right where a number of campus pathways crossed. As it happened, that intersection was directly beneath the tracks of Chicago’s legendary elevated rapid-transit system, known to everyone as the L.

At 95 decibels—a noise level as loud as a live Linkin Park show—the sound produced by a passing train made the site uninhabitable without radical intervention. The solution was a concrete tube around the train that contains much of the noise. And the engineering that makes this design possible closely connects it to the core curriculum of IIT. So the tube, a charismatic form in and of itself, became an identifying symbol with a strong tie to the campus culture. Likewise, the building under the tube pays homage to the campus’s Mies steel-and-glass structures. And its interior serves as a mixing bowl for activities tailored to a new generation of students at IIT.

So, yes, the Bilbao effect can happen on just about any campus. But it’s not easy. Many people think of campus buildings as repositories of memory, but buildings can also carry messages about the culture and aspirations of a community, especially if the community is rich with traditions and iconography. When an architect creates a new structure that advances the culture of the university in ways that are meaningful both to the campus population and to people who have no connection to the institution, he or she has reached the apex of campus design. —Mark McVay

Mark McVay, one of this month’s guest bloggers, is design director in the Los Angeles office of the architecture firm SmithGroup. You can read his previous posts here, here, here, and here.

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center’s interior features ceilings that appear to be unfinished, translucent orange walls, and subtle, overscaled images of Mies van der Rohe—just visible on the glass on the right. (Photograph by Mark McVay)

In a photograph taken from a nearby L station, Chicago’s skyline rises beyond the tube above the McCormick Tribune Campus Center. (Chronicle photograph)