In a shady park along the Grand Canal in the dazzling city of Venice, an arts journalist from Turkey stood in a neo-classical brick building and studied a rack of postcards about Detroit.
The cards capture Detroitβs grandeur and desolation, from the magnificence of the Fisher Building to an abandoned house afire.
But around her were 12 fantastical, space-age models reimagining four Detroit neighborhoods β miniature tabletop marvels created for the worldβs most prestigious architectural exhibition, the Venice Architectural Biennale.
βMy friend told me Detroit is emerging from its ashes,β said Yasemin Bay, the Istanbul writer, during the Biennaleβs opening this past May. βMy friend told me to come and see this exhibit.β
For the last six months in jewel-like Venice, the architectural world has debated the merits of a dozen speculative, futuristic designs to reinvent dreary stretches of Detroit.
And come February, Detroiters themselves will get to weigh in when the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit hosts the exhibit and community panels.
The show has generated praise and criticism. A Detroit activist group created a web link for a βdigital occupationβ of the Venice show, protesting that it ignores the needs and ingenuity of city residents.
The Venice exhibit adds another dimension to Detroitβs evolving image across the globe, and the city of Detroitβs Planning Director Maurice Cox welcomes the controversy and conversation. βIt is wonderful to be put in the international spotlight,β says Cox. βDetroit is a laboratory for a 21st-century city. Thatβs where we want to be.
βWe are in the process of a pivot from where everybody comes to visit our ruins to a city where people come to see where new trends take place.β
The exhibit, officially called βThe Architectural Imagination,ββ will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the civil unrest in Detroit during the summer of 1967.
Metro Detroitersβ reactions to the Venice exhibit will likely range from captivated, curious, and bemused to bothered, angry, and inspired. There may also be some cursing and arguing.
Hello World, Meet Detroit
The Venice Biennale, pronounced βbee-yen-ah-layβ in Italian, is a Worldβs Fair of architectural achievements and innovation.
Some 60-plus countries have showcases in the exposition, which ends Nov. 27. The U.S. State Department maintains a pavilion at the Venice site and selects a theme for America
to showcase.
Detroit was chosen through a bid by the University of Michiganβs then architecture school dean Monica Ponce de Leon, along with her co-curator Cynthia Davidson, who edits the international architectural journal Log.
The pair reviewed more than 250 entries by architects and selected 12. The teams met with city officials and community groups in developing designs for four sites.
βOur main goal is to encourage wide-ranging discussion about reinventing post-industrial cities like Detroit, which can have far-reaching impact around the world,β says Ponce de Leon, who left U-Mβs Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning earlier this year.
The four sites are:
- The Packard Plant, an international symbol of Detroitβs ruin porn.
- Open land near the Dequindre Cut at the edge of Eastern Market.
- A decrepit public works yard near Livernois Avenue and West Vernor Highway in southwest Detroit.
- The area around the U.S. Post Office mail-sorting facility on West Fort Street at Trumbull Avenue in Corktown.
At the exhibitβs opening reception in Venice, U.S. Ambassador to Italy John Phillips said Detroitβs emergence from municipal bankruptcy provides βreal challenges and real opportunities.β
The project was chosen, Phillips said, because Detroit became βsynonymous with a failed city,β and is now on the rebound.
Detroit Planning Director Cox says the ambassadorβs βfailed cityβ comment was an βinartful wayβ of saying Detroit represents βa prototypical city thatβs been managing population decline for decades.β
Detroit boasted nearly 2 million people 65 years ago, but the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates the cityβs 143 square miles contains 677,000 people.
βDetroit is at a pivot point,β says Cox. βFor the first time in a half century, the question isnβt how we manage decline, but how Detroit retains those who have stuck it out and how we manage the growth.β
What a Concept(s)
The fantastical concepts illustrated by several architectural teams imagine new housing and new communities to change Detroitβs appearance and fortunes. And while some of the designs may seem whimsical and far-fetched, the models address practical issues pertaining to education, the environment, and preservation. There is also a desire to create beauty through innovation.
Architect Marshall Brown of Chicago designed the Dequindre Civic Academy β a tower taller than the GM Renaissance Center β for families, students, and instructors to live in a kindergarten-through-college community near Eastern Market.
βThe children of Detroit could live and learn in Detroitβs tallest monument β a monumental village,β says Brown. It may seem unachievable, he said, but βeverything real was once a dream.β
The Ann Arbor office of T+E+A+M architects reimagined the Packard Plant. The architects, who also teach at U-M, used rubble from the site and mixed it with recycled plastic to make a unique building material to resurface the plantβs faΓ§ade. The interior could house factories devoted to material technologies, such as reinventing rubble.
Detroitβs crumbled plants and infrastructure, said T+E+A+M architect Meredith Miller, βcan be a positive thing in a new representation. Instead of bringing in something foreign, we used what was there for a brand-new use.β
Now working in L.A., Detroit native Andrew Zago designed a trio of colorful, bold buildings near Eastern Market to house and educate as many as 65,000 refugees escaping Syriaβs civil war.
βAs much as I really appreciate the very small endeavors and struggles in Detroit,β says Zago, βat some point, you need larger-scale projects to pull the city back together.β
As part of the exhibit, Zago β himself the son of Italian immigrants β penned an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, asking for federal dollars and commitment to helping rebuild Detroit by welcoming refugees.
At the Corktown/U.S. Post Office site, architects Albert Pope and JesΓΊs Vassallo out of Houstonβs Rice School of Architecture created modernist housing from locally grown trees.
At the desolate old public works yard in southwest Detroitβs Mexicantown, imagine a bandshell and Mexican-like marketplace, with features that pay homage to the neighborhoodβs artistic expression through both graffiti and murals.
Thatβs what L.A.-based architect team Florencia Pita and Jackilin Hah Bloom designed.
The Mexicantown designs reflect the desires of southwest Detroit residents who met with the architects last fall, says Kathy Wendler, president of the Southwest Detroit Business Association.
The 7-acre site has room for lots of dreams, as well as big problems with water runoff and contamination. Residents wanted a festival-like gathering space and places to shop.
The Biennale designs for the neighborhood, says Wendler, βwere fun, colorful, and interesting.β
Residents knew the architectsβ designs were pie-in-the-sky proposals, βbut you canβt stop appreciating aesthetics because you have to deal with a water issue,β says Wendler. βYou have to do it all together.β
Dissent and Debate
A Detroit grass-roots group protests that the Venice designs are an elitist, impractical diversion to real issues facing Detroiters such as water shutoffs and unfair evictions.
Musical artist and community activist Bryce Detroit is the face of βDetroit Resists,β which was formed to protest the concept behind the designs even before they were revealed.
βWhatβs happening here represents the conventional design process and since the times of urban renewal, thatβs been a force of destruction for African-Americans and indigenous people,β Bryce Detroit said while in Venice.
βDetroit is not a blank slate.β
Bryce Detroit collaborated on the protest with U-M professor Andrew Herscher, an architect and architectural historian.
In Venice, they unveiled a βdigital occupationβ of the Detroit exhibit.
Clicking on a web link revealed the drawing of a water tower superimposed on the exhibitβs entrance, proclaiming βFree the Waterβ to highlight the cityβs water shutoff crisis.
Another overlaid message: βRespect Existence or Expect Resistance.β
Herscher, the author of The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit, a 2012 book that analyzed how Detroiters reuse vacant land and abandoned buildings, declined an interview.
The criticism hasnβt come just from Detroit activists. Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne commended the exhibit as βbeautifully designed,β but said the architectsβ projects represent βtop-down and slickly rendered solutions shot through with disdain for the kind of expertise required to get architecture at this vast scale approved, financed and built.β
Some of the criticism could censor creativity and βdo a disservice to the people of Detroit,β says Detroit architect V. Mitch McEwen.
McEwenβs design for the Mexicantown neighborhood envisions honeycomb-like housing, an air purification network to lessen neighborhood air pollution, and swooping pneumatic channels to ferry both waste and freight.
Her U-M colleague and Detroit Resists organizer Herscher never spoke to her about her design or Biennale concerns, says McEwen.
The criticism assumes that Detroiters arenβt entitled to think big, she adds.
βThereβs an assumption that (because) Detroit is a majority black city and not a high-income city, that Detroiters want to see now-familiar architecture,β says McEwen. βThereβs an assumption β¦ that the typical Detroiter cannot relate to contemporary architecture. That assumption is completely racist and classist and shows a problem on many levels.β
McEwen hopes her designs and others in the exhibit encourage todayβs architects and urban planners to throw out assumptions. βDetroiters are ready for something that is only in Detroit, that is specifically Detroit,β says McEwen, βand looks like nothing that has ever happened before.β
The debate will only enhance any future Detroit architecture, says critic Janelle Zara.
The Detroit Resists protest, Zara wrote on curbed.com, is a βcontrast to the slickness of the architectural models β¦ it reads as refreshingly authentic, passionate, real.
βDespite its direct opposition to the message of the curatorsβ mission, the Detroit Resists occupation amplifies it,β said Zara, adding that it is βexpanding the conversation about the city, and furthering the possibility for change.β
Steering the Conversation
When the exhibit comes to MOCAD, co-curator Cynthia Davidson says organizers are aiming to host the architects for discussions with Detroiters about each of the four neighborhoods.
βWeβd love to talk with anyone about what weβve done,β says Davidson. βArchitecture is often criticized by being kind of a mystery, regardless of economic or education background.β
With the Detroit design models in front of them, Davidson hopes to ask: βIs there one you would want to see in your community? What would it mean in your community if it were built? Or do you want to throw it out and start over?β
MOCAD Executive Director Elysia Borowy-Reeder says the exhibitβs concepts are evocative of monumental βcivic projects that make great cities, and to stay relevant, Detroit needs them.
βIf we can contribute and steer the conversation to civic cornerstones,β she says, βthatβs an amazing and positive role that architecture and design can play.β
The exhibit is βmaking the world see Detroit differentlyβ and will do the same for Detroiters once it opens at MOCAD, says Cox, the cityβs planning director. βItβs quite extraordinary for a community to stop and reflect on whatβs possible, and Detroit is a place that hasnβt had that opportunity as much as it deserves.β
Cox maintains that Detroit is already promoting innovative design, even without the impetus of a Venice Biennale. βWrestling fantastical visions into shovel-ready reality βis kind of my daily bread,β he says. βThe difference between the Biennale and the grounded visionary work that is underway is working with the complexity of communities, politics, and finance.β
Detroit is attracting world-famous architects now, Cox adds. Renowned landscape architect Michel Desvigne is part of a project led by Skidmore Owings & Merrill to do comprehensive planning for the east riverfront.
Cox notes that Dan Gilbertβs Bedrock Real Estate revitalizations in Brush Park β mixing in new housing with surviving Victorian-era turreted mansions β will be βthe largest collection of forward-looking contemporary architecture in the city.β
Plans call for transforming a few hundred vacant lots in the Fitzgerald neighborhood near Marygrove College into βlow-maintenance, high visual impactβ landscapes.
βThereβs no place in the country that has attempted to do this,β says Cox.
But Cox relishes the debate to come about the Biennaleβs designs and the architectural imagination unleashed.
Indeed, itβs already given him an idea. βWe donβt have to wait for another invitation to be the focus of the Venice Biennale,β says Cox.
βEvery two years, letβs get together and reflect on what Detroit represents and designs. Detroit should have its own architecture Biennale.β
βThe Architectural Imaginationβ will be on exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit from Feb. 10-April 23. Visit for more information.
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