Lafayette Apartment Towers vs 211 West Fort Street

Comparing the Lafayette Apartment Towers and the 211 West Fort Street is interesting because they both stand in Detroit, MI, and were completed in the same year, but they were designed by different architects.

This offers a unique glimpse at how rival designers approached projects in the same city during the same era.

The 211 West Fort Street is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 367ft (112m) with 27 floors above ground, while the Lafayette Apartment Towers reaches 213ft (65m) with 22 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the Lafayette Apartment Towers and the 211 West Fort Street were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the International Style style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Mies van der Rohe and Harley, Ellington, Cowin & Stirton followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

The Lafayette Apartment Towers is primarily residential, while the 211 West Fort Street is primarily commercial.

The Lafayette Apartment Towers offers 584 residential units.

These two towers illustrate the many possible ways to combine structure and enclosure in skyscraper design.