Lafayette Apartment Towers vs Coleman A. Young Municipal Center

Comparing the Lafayette Apartment Towers and the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center is interesting because they both rise in Detroit, MI, yet they were conceived by two different design teams, Mies van der Rohe and Harley, Ellington and Day, and were completed at different points in time. They were finished more than 9 years apart.

This contrast within the same city allows us to see how different creative minds interpreted the evolving needs of Detroit across time.

Let's take a closer look!

These two towers present an interesting contrast in their proportions. The Coleman A. Young Municipal Center rises higher at 318ft (97m), while the Lafayette Apartment Towers reaches 213ft (65m). However, the Lafayette Apartment Towers accommodates more floors with 22 levels above ground, compared to 19 floors in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

This suggests different approaches to interior space design. The Coleman A. Young Municipal Center has an average floor-to-floor height of approximately 5.1m, while the Lafayette Apartment Towers has more compact floors averaging around 3m each. The taller building's more generous floor heights might indicate grander interior spaces, higher ceilings, or different programmatic requirements.

These different proportions likely reflect the specific needs each building was designed to serve, whether driven by zoning regulations, client requirements, or the intended use of the spaces within. The contrast shows how architects can achieve different spatial experiences even when working with similar overall building scales.

Both the Lafayette Apartment Towers and the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center 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 and Day 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 Coleman A. Young Municipal Center is primarily governmental.

The Lafayette Apartment Towers offers 584 residential units.

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