Artist:
Corine Vermeulen (born 1970 in Gouda, Netherlands; lives and works in Detroit, USA).

Materials:
Color photographs

Description:
“Thanks for the view, Mr. Mies (Detroit, 2009) is a series of portraits of residents in their living rooms in the Lafayette Park neighborhood of downtown Detroit, home to the largest collection of Mies van der Rohe-designed buildings in the world. While much has been written about Mies’s life and work, the purpose of this series is to focus attention on the community of people who live in his buildings and the way this utopian mid-20th century urban renewal project has successfully survived and adapted to present-day conditions in Detroit. Rather than focusing on the stark interior spaces and austere exteriors that one might expect to see in photographs of iconic modernist architecture, these portraits seek to show the organic and idiosyncratic ways that people live in Lafayette Park.”
—”Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies,” Corine Vermeulen website.

“Lafayette Park in Detroit consists of three high-rises, 24 single-story courthouses and 162 two-story town houses, completed in the early 1960s. It was an urban renewal project built on land that was once a working-class black neighborhood. It was designed by one of the 20th century’s most famous modern architects, Mies van der Rohe.

“All these elements have spelled disaster in other cities, and yet Lafayette Park has been a success, with high occupancy rates, a racially diverse population and a strong commitment to maintaining Mies’s architecture.

“At-home portraits of residents by Corine Vermeulen show Mies’s architecture as a strong frame for personal expression. Some homes look like shrines to 1958, while others reflect the lived-in décor of decades. Jacqueline Neal, an interior designer and 12-year resident of the Pavilion, the smallest of the complex’s three towers, spoke last month about living and accessorizing with Mies.”
—Alexandra Lange, “Home Sweet Architectural Masterpiece,” The New York Times, October 3, 2012.