Froth

Running parallel to the back of each row of townhouses is a long subterranean corridor, cramped, artificially lit but still dark, with pipes and cables running through its length, moisture trickling down its unfinished concrete walls, it’s the mechanical and services spine of the block. Garbage cans are lined up at each door marking the otherwise inconspicuous switch to another home. At the end of the corridor is another door, this one leading to a series of hidden exterior steps running parallel to the blind exterior end wall of the townhouse row. If you are not looking for them, the steps, and those coming in and out, are indeed hard to see… Ni vu ni connu. Here the ideology of making a distinction between what is allowed to be seen and what should remain hidden is designed into a long corridor allowing for the covert movement of trash and extra-marital affairs.

We are in Lafayette Park (1961-5), Detroit, the residential complex designed by Mies Van der Rohe. Our tour guides, all long time residents, are immensely proud of where they live. Given the recent financial crisis and the decline with which Detroit has become infamous for (Detroit, mausoleum of high capitalism) it is remarkable (at least for the visitor) to see such a viable community so near downtown. According to one of our guides, the reason why the complex has withstood the crisis is obvious: good design and pride in its architecture. This, it could be added, has gone hand in hand with the tastes of a portion of the middle class on more stable incomes and mortgages. ‘We sometimes have issues with new residents putting up fences, but they are quickly brought down.’ He has a chuckle recalling how he once asked a fellow resident to remove her patio furniture because he was showing the place to visitors. Lafayette Park, he comments with a sigh of relief, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places so resident owners are not allowed any exterior modifications, including modifications to the planting scheme. Appropriation takes place within. And each townhouse visited reflected the personal tastes of the owners within the boundaries set up by the architect and the NRHP–ultimately left to cosmetic changes.

‘Architecture is too important to be left to architects.’ (Giancarlo de Carlo, 1967)

‘And what did the users add? Their needs.’ (Henri Lefebvre, in 1968, discussing the modifications to Le Corbusier’s Maison à Pessac)

When I visited Lafayette Park in April 2011 I was in the midst of a review of the theory and practice of participation in architecture from the 1950s onward. And so I wonder how heritage conservation, also translated into a distinction between things shown and things hidden, relates to the notions of appropriation and occupation for residential architecture as developed since the 1950s. If we follow this trend and see creative appropriation as a form of emancipation from the rigidity of Modern architecture then how should we balance the conservation of residential projects that have become Modernist icons? These are, after all, representatives of a culture’s heritage and a strong emphasis on the process of design over the aesthetics of the product, might indeed make us forget about the value of the object that frames this same process. Lafayette Park is turning out to be a successful product and process. And its resident-owners have bought into the particular lifestyle and ideology it represents as well as how it should be represented. While this is certainly true for those we met, others may not be so convinced (those putting up fences, for example), but certainly everyone appears to be toeing the line. At the moment, Modern residential projects are being re-visited and re-valued so that the tension between ‘user needs’ and design determinism may not, in particular instances, be such an issue after all.

Yet I still cannot help thinking that there is something inherently fraught with the balance between conservation and appropriation, especially when it comes to ‘living’ communities like Lafayette Park. Given that there is no clear boundary between private interests and public concerns, should the ethics governing the conservation of private residential architecture be different from those governing publicly owned architecture? To what extent should the original design and aesthetics of a home be protected against its current occupants? Perhaps more importantly, when should the agency of individual owners be trumped in order to preserve the state of a cultural artefact whose function may invite exactly that type of creative behaviour? But Lafayette Park is a ‘finalized’ masterpiece whose transformation is denied by those who have chosen to live within its well defined perimeter. Here the theories of process and appropriation with roots in the 1950s and 60s meet the reality of actual lived-in Modern architecture at the beginning of the 21^st century.

The undivided backyard between two rows of townhouses is empty, no sign of either spilling out from living rooms or children playing (or having played). There is a common playground in the middle of the complex, with sparse metallic play equipment and painted, without much surprise and to everyone’s ironic delight, black. The only signs of inhabitation from the outside of the townhouses are the interior shading devices for the floor to ceiling windows (vertical blinds and low curtain rods cheekily omitting the original recess-concealed roller blinds) and the owners’ choice of art works for their vestibules. Architects are notorious for omitting the presence of people in the representation of their built projects. In this case people are wilfully removing themselves from the actual ‘living’ project, leaving very few visible traces, hiding most, and finding their agency, it seems, in the freezing of time and space.