In 2013, Kyle Hoff was grinding it out in a lower-rung job at a Chicago architecture firm when a friend from graduate school convinced him to move to Detroit. The week he arrived, the Motor City, saddled with about $19 billion in debt, filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Hoff started to wonder about his choice—as a young designer, he had just left a good, solid job for a less certain one with a start-up, in a city with equally wobbly prospects.

Since then the city’s fortunes have lifted—and Hoff’s along with them. Today, he’s cofounder of the successful Detroit-based furniture company Floyd. He’s also, perhaps most enviably, the new occupant—along with his wife, Brooke, and their infant daughter, Henni—of an elegant, classically minimalist home designed by the modernist pioneer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. “Here I am, almost seven years later, and I love it—it’s a great city,” he says. “It’s ever-changing for the positive.”

Shortly after arriving in Michigan, Hoff met filmmaker Alex O’Dell, and the two started to talk about design—and furniture in particular. Hoff had felt frustrated working at an architecture firm by the often bogged-down process of getting a project to the finish line. Furniture offered a more streamlined route from idea to product.

“I was interested in furniture and excited about building something,” Hoff says. “Seeing something as a concept to seeing it in space happens a lot quicker.”

Hoff was also inspired by his recent history. Having moved from college in Ohio to graduate school in Michigan, and then to Chicago, he had—like most students—tossed away or left behind his share of cheap furniture. He wanted to create things that were transportable, adaptable, and lasting. “About ten million tons of furniture and furnishings ended up in landfills in 2015,” Hoff says. “How do we provide a better solution?”

Even before meeting O’Dell, Hoff had come up with a concept that became the Floyd “leg”—a metal post with clamps on one end that enables you to turn any flat object into a table. He cold-called about 20 manufacturers across the Midwest and finally found a company to make it. Hoff and O’Dell set up a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of selling 100 sets of legs. “We ended up selling 1,400—that gave us confidence,” Hoff says.

Hoff and O’Dell launched Floyd in 2013, and they have since expanded the product line. Now, many of the pieces in the line are showcased against the clean backdrop of the Hoffs’ new house in Detroit’s Lafayette Park.

The Lafayette Park historic district is home to the largest collection of Mies-designed residential buildings in the world, and it has remained largely insulated from the city’s downturns in the decades since its residential towers and townhomes were built, beginning in the 1950s. In the last several years, with Detroit’s bounce back from bankruptcy, they’ve become even more sought after.

The Hoffs had been waiting for the right home to hit the market, and in 2017 they bought one of the district’s ranch-style Court House homes. The appeal, at least initially, was its location within walking distance to downtown and the design itself: the glass walls connecting the interior with a walled courtyard, the clean lines, the simplicity and small footprint.

“The openness of the layout is very welcoming,” Hoff says. “The kitchen bleeds into the dining space, which bleeds into the living room, which bleeds into the exterior. The windows are floor-to-ceiling, but not in an obnoxious, full-glass-building kind of way.”

The footprint of about 1,200 square feet has inspired the family to keep possessions to a well-edited, tidy minimum. As it turns out, the modernism of the 1950s aligns well with the less-is-more mindset shared by many of today’s consumers and design fans. “I like having a compact footprint,” Hoff says. “There’s no excess.”

There are, however, some quirks. Because it’s a historic landmark, residents are limited in what they can do with their spaces. “You can’t change any of the walls,” Hoff says, adding, “I kind of like that constraint—you have to work with what’s there.” (The Hoffs’ limited renovations include installing new travertine floors, removing and resurfacing kitchen cabinets, and putting in a new bedroom for in-laws in the basement.)

And because it’s a co-op, there are boards and meetings.

“There are a lot of politics that go on, from what the grounds look like, to the lighting, to the exterior of the buildings,” Hoff says. On the other hand, there are lots of upsides. “All the grounds are maintained by the co-op, except for the courtyard,” he says. “Who wants to worry about mowing the grass? It takes a lot of stuff off our plate.”

The collective power of a co-op also means getting better rates on services, and on projects like adding geothermal heating and cooling. “If you’re living in a multifamily building, sharing walls or sharing a footprint, that’s more efficient than living in a single-family home in the suburbs somewhere,” Hoff says.

But, more than anything, a thoughtfully designed area, laid out specifically to connect people, provides a stronger-than-usual sense of community. That’s something the Hoffs didn’t expect. “I’ve lived in apartment buildings and walk-ups,” Hoff says. “You would think that in an apartment building you’d know your neighbor. But you walk out of the elevators and you don’t see anybody.”

“I feel like I’ve met a lot more people and run into people more than anywhere I’ve lived,” he adds. “It’s open, but compact in a lot of ways. You have more chance run-ins and communal things that you share. It creates those opportunities.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Mies van der Rohe

Builder/General Contractor: Saverio Montalto Inc (basement/bathroom)

Interior Design: Brooke and Kyle Hoff

Cabinetry Design/Installation: Schmoe Carpentry

Related Reading:

A New York Transplant Remakes One of Mies van der Rohe’s Coveted Townhouses in Detroit

What It’s Like to Live in Mies van der Rohe’s Historic Lafayette Park

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Inside Floyd Cofounder Kyle Hoff’s Mies van der Rohe–Designed Detroit Home