Mies's Lafayette Park gets first new project in 40 years
For the first time in 40 years, Detroit’s famed Lafayette Park has a new addition. Designed by Detroit- based McIntosh Poris Associates , DuCharme Place is a 185- unit apartment community comprised of four midrise buildings. Adding to the Mies van der Rohe–designed historic district, the new development plays liberally with many of Mies’s original concepts. The long history of Lafayette Park includes the “slum” clearing urban renewal of postwar urban centers , the rise of modernist housing blocks in the U.S., and the realization of one of Mies’s largest housing projects . The first projects to be completed in the development were the Mies- designed Pavilion Apartments and a series of townhouses that are most often associated with the neighborhood. After those initial buildings, a handful of architects, including Gunnar Birkerts and John Macsai, added a school, shopping center, and more housing, with the last major project finishing in 1967. Ludwig Hilberseimer, Alfred Caldwell,...