The apartment building lies in a green suburb of villas north of the Johns Hopkins University on the same street as Mies’ earlier One Charles Center office building some five kilometres away. Although the parkland character of the neighbouring university campus per- meates the low-rise neighbourhood in the vicinity, this stretch of Charles Street is flanked by a series of high-rise apartment build- ings. Highfield House is a fourteen-storey north-south oriented slab that stands raised on columns on a platform articulated as an architecturally landscaped garden.
One enters the complex from the east. Aside from the sup- porting columns and the access cores, the ground floor is open affording a view through to the garden beyond. The central sec- tion of the building with the entrance lobby is fully glazed, while the remainder is a forest of columns through which one passes into the garden. Enclosed by a perimeter wall the garden is a pla- teau containing an arrangement of planting beds, benches and clearly proportioned sections of lawn. Two rows of five benches have been placed in front of freestanding glass walls with electric light sources concealed within their frames. During the day they serve as screens while at night they are transformed into freestand- ing illuminated objects.1
The car parking is arranged below ground. The almost square site has a height difference of five metres descending westwards making it possible for cars to access the parking via a ramp oppo- site the main entrance. The lower level also houses the communal facilities which open onto an interior courtyard with trees and a round swimming pool. This courtyard takes the form of a rect- angular incision of 2:3 proportions in the middle of the rearward garden, resulting in outdoor areas on two levels. The trees are arranged freely in beds on the lower level and exemplify a prin- ciple seen in many of Mies’ buildings from this period in which the buildings were rigidly symmetrical but the vegetation was placed asymmetrically.