Lakeview Penthouse

This residence combines a full floor within Commonwealth Plaza, a landmark 1957 modernist apartment tower designed by Mies van der Rohe. The existing layout of small apartments is reorganized to create an expansive living space with an uninterrupted 105’ expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows along its southern elevation, along with corner views to the east and west. By removing the typical interior subdivisions, Mies’s artfully detailed curtain wall system is fully expressed as a spatial element within the apartment’s interior. The façade’s proportion and rhythm, its relation to the building’s structural grid, its precise assemblage of aluminum profiles, and its iconic corner resolutions are revealed and preserved as the primary existing condition of the project. Within this context, design elements are understood as a series of distinct yet complementary elements that neither detract from nor compete with the existing building.