Glass House Studies, Multiple Views

During the 1950s, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began working on a large project to translate his steel-and-glass buildings into another arena: urban renewal. Working with urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer and landscape architect Alfred Caldwell, Mies’s Lafayette Park redevelopment project in Detroit proposed a mix of three different building types: high-rise towers, duplex townhouses, and single-story courtyard houses. The diversity of living space and sensitive site plan have been touted as the key to the project’s long-term stability. Many of the qualities of the Lafayette Park townhouse, including the dimensions of the row of houses and the distinctive detailing of the window walls, appear in two design sketches for a glass house dating from the late 1940s.