M: So on that note, just to be a Lafayette Park/Mies nerd, what do you know now about this particular space, this apartment? What do you think about this space? What interests you about it? What have you learned in your investigation of this apartment?

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photo by Michelle Andonian, 2015

B: Well, I guess one of the main things is that I’ve just gotten used to it. It’s so specific, and so striking. One of the things, you know, people come in and go, “Wow, these windows.” I grew up training as a dancer. My disciplined self happened in the dance studio. And when you’re coming up in classical ballet, which is what I came up in from the time I was four years old, my whole growth and the development of my body and my sense of self have been in relationship to a front and in relationship to an audience, in relationship to a gaze (and this is something that definitely intersects with the female figure, the question of the gaze). But ultimately, with dance, you have this wall of mirrors in the studio -- it’s acknowledged, it’s an important part of it, this wall of mirrors which supplies a constant reminder. So, to come into a space like this, which is about exposure, it’s also about being able to look out and having this incredible view of the sunset and what I can see from here over Ford Field right now: the pinks and the reds and the yellows and the blues.

M : I’m looking at all these lights turning on in Lafayette Towers, which is so beautiful.

B: Yeah, the honeycomb effect is so beautiful. But at the same time, there’s a level at which it’s a kind of exposure. But then I don’t know how exposed I really am because when you’re outside, it’s kind of darkened.

M: Yeah, and that I think is an important distinction between life in these high rises and life in the townhouses, where you are really exposed down there. It’s very different.

B: Yes, but also, I’m close enough to the street so that you still have a sense of the ground.

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photo by stephen garrett dewyer, 2015

M: That's true. And you know, I tried to spy on you from my apartment, with binoculars, during the first night of the performance.

B: You did?!

M: Yeah! I was so curious to see what it looked like!

B: Oh my goodness, I love that! Did it work?

M: No, I couldn’t see anything. It was just dark. I thought for sure I’d be able to see something.

B: Because of the trees, maybe. We’re right at the trees.

M: Yeah, I couldn’t see anything.

B: But it's so interesting because this architecture immediately transposes the two spaces, the space of the home and the space of the studio or the stage, and that, ultimately, is one of the most beautiful things about this space. The kind of modernism of it, you know, the discussion or the discourse around that moment in architecture, where Le Corbusier becomes the vocalist in terms of his tenets, the five tenets of —

M: Isn’t it three?

B: It’s five.

M: Oh, right, I'm sorry, there are the five points of architecture and then the urban dweller has the three essential joys -- light, space, and greenery -- which I always think about in relation to Lafayette Park.

B: Yeah, you have the non-weight bearing walls, you have the horizontal expanse of the windows...

M: And the pilotis...

B: And then you have the rooftop garden. And what is the fifth? I can’t remember. But part of that is the home as "a machine for living," the efficiency of movement, the efficiency of pathways, of being able to get from point A to point B. I mean, chefs know this because they have to organize their kitchens in terms of what they cook and when they go from here to there and what makes the most sense when it’s busy, that kind of orientation and distribution of space. But that’s an old conversation, and we can have new conversation of cross programming: Bernard Tschumi talking about a rotunda being turned into a swimming pool and the poetics around what can happen there in terms of shifting the programming...

M: Right, it is an old conversation and yet the space endures. We just keep living here.

B: Yes, and we also shift it and we turn it into something else. In Detroit, I think the mecca of that example would be the site of the workshop of Henry Ford that then became the Michigan Theatre, the largest theatre of its kind in 1925, and then all of its different incarnations, being turned into the music venue or the porn theatre or whatever, and then being boxed up and then being turned into a parking garage! Oh my goodness, that’s quite a passage for a building and for a site. And so that really interests me. But the kind of modernism of the space, it shifts when you try to... in a way, I’m complicating it, because I’m saying, "Oh no, but it's theatrical." That notion of efficiency is also a social construct, just as the notion that the theatre is a space to perform things. So it’s like the architecture is its own actor.

M: There's something I love about Lafayette Park that I'm reminded of. I don’t know, this was a great insight to me, maybe you know this, but I was reading about Mies one day and I came to realize that the I-beams, the mullions on the exterior of the high rises, are ornamental!

B: Yes, I remember you telling me about that!

M: They serve no function! It's amazing. It's like the building is performing function.

B: Absolutely. It’s performing its modernism! For us. Because that’s a social thing, that’s a conversation that we have. So it’s performing that for us.

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Photo of Lafayette Towers West facade by Matthew Piper, 2015

M: That’s great. You know, I think about Le Corbusier all the time here, because this place is Mies and it’s Caldwell and it’s Hilberseimer, but everything kind of comes from -- if you read Le Corbusier, that's where everything comes from, this is "towers in a park," this is the thing.

B: Totally. Although we don’t have the roof deck.

M: They have the roof deck [pointing out the window to nearby Leland Lofts].

B: They have the roof deck. Somebody has it. At least we get to look at it.

M: And I think Lafayette Park is so anomalous, which makes it so special, and which, I think, makes it work.

B: Well I think it was successful, too, which isn’t always the case.

M: Almost never the case.

B: Lafayette Park is pretty exceptional, because it’s successful and people love living here.

M: Yeah they do, and I think it’s maybe, and who knows, but it's probably because it failed early on. The intent was to have, like, eight more Mies towers going toward the river, as I understand it. And the developer died in a plane crash, Herbert Greenwald, and the loss of that centralizing presence led to the thing shifting, kind of falling apart. And I think that if it had been fully realized, if it had gone to the river, it would have been a disaster. I can't believe the city of Detroit could have held onto that many people in this district if it had expanded to the extent it was supposed to. And so this is a little tiny slice of Le Corbusier's vision, but it isn’t anywhere near the full realization, which would have been this sort of nightmare of high rise after high rise after high rise….

B: Which is basically the projects, which is what you see in New York. And the thing about Detroit that makes Lafayette Park so amazing is the way that it is so different in a city of homes. Because ultimately, Detroit is a city of houses, not apartments, so Lafayette Park has a very different currency than it would in a city like New York, which is all apartments and high rises. It shifts the relationship to the space in really interesting ways.

It’s been a great space to work in and to be in. It’s also been a sanctuary for me. After years in New York, especially. I mean, you’re out on the street. That’s the thing that people would say, "God, everybody’s living in these tiny places" or whatever. Not everybody does, but one of the things you realize when you go into someone’s apartment -- which is rare because you’re almost always meeting out. For us to be working in my apartment is not very New York. We’d be in a cafe or a bar, because it’s so rare that you go into people’s homes unless you are intimate with them. But that’s one of the things that’s so lovely about it, because when you do go, you realize that these apartments are their sanctuaries. The way in which that is articulated is very subjective and individual but ultimately, that’s what the home space provides, is a sanctuary, a sanction from the public sphere, from the street. And for me, that’s what an apartment does — it’s different from a home. I grew up in houses, but as an adult, since I left Santa Cruz in undergrad, I’ve always lived in apartments. Apartment living is a specific thing.

M: Definitely. And high rise living is a specific kind of apartment living.

B: Absolutely. And the home can be a sanctuary, too, but it’s different.

M: It’s more porous.

B: Yeah, it’s different. The apartment is more of a sanction in this way. It’s provided that for me, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

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photo by Michelle Andonian, 2015