Mies van der Rohe Plaza

Detroit, MI, United States

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Mies van der Rohe Plaza

Detroit, MI, United States

Firm

Type

Government + Health ›

YEAR

2005

This project is an installation to honor Mies van der Rohe, and was the winning entry for a two-stage competition to revitalize the central area of the pedestrian shopping center of Lafayette Park. The project creates a bas relief surface by placing a collection of customized pre-cast concrete tiles symmetrically within the plaza, yet asymmetrically in the “z” axis. This simple modification allows one end of the plaza to be elevated above grade for seating, while the other end of the plaza remains easily accessible from the adjacent sidewalks. At its terminus, the surface continues vertically, forming a wall behind which stairs rise to the pedestrian areas of the Lafayette Park Towers. The bas relief strategy is used not only for the overall figure in the plaza, but within the individual concrete tiles as well. The fabrication of the tiles emerged out of investigations into “book-matching” as inspired by Mies’ trademark use of large slabs of material cut into rectangles and book-matched symmetrically about their joints. The visual striations inherent in stone became score lines in the concrete, directing water into the field of planting beds throughout the plaza. This effectively merges the figurative and the abstract, the aesthetic and the functional. Material and program- seating, paving, permeability and planting are combined into a single figure.