Now, with two major Koolhaas projects opening in the United States in the space of a year—the Seattle library and a student center in Chicago—we can begin to judge for ourselves. (Koolhaas is also scheduled to unveil a concert hall in Portugal in a few months, as well as a new Dutch Embassy in Berlin.) The student center, on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, was finished last fall. IIT's campus is a legendary one architecturally: Its master plan and many of its buildings were designed by modernist icon Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. But the site picked for the new student center was awkward, sitting directly underneath tracks used by Chicago's elevated commuter train, the El.