Mies van der Rohe, Lafayette Park

lafayette park house exterior apartment building

Tags:: Architecture

High-rise superblocks and identical clusters of row houses set apart from the urban grid have been much maligned as some of the major wrongdoings of modernism, but Detroit's Lafayette Park—the first urban-renewal project in the United States—tells a vastly different story. Within a sprawling, decentralized city that has suffered near-disastrous decline, this racially and economically diverse enclave just northeast of downtown has not only aged gracefully but today flourishes with new life.

— Sam Grawe

The apartment towers at Lafayette Park.

Photo by: Raimund Koch

+ Read Article