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Emily Helen Butterfield, born August 4, 1884, was the first licensed woman architect in Michigan. Butterfield grew up in Detroit with a love of watercolor painting, and eventually studied architecture at Syracuse University, where she was a founding member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority... View full entry
The United States Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) has unveiled its annual list of "highway boondoggles," a list of "budget-eating highway projects" that will "harm communities and the environment, while likely failing to achieve meaningful transportation goals." The proposed North Houston... View full entry
In response to the ongoing toxicity crisis gripping the town of Flint, Michigan, 2020 Democratic presidential contender Julián Castro has unveiled a nationwide lead abatement plan. Last week, Castro, former Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Barack Obama, became the first... View full entry
If Michigan isn’t the first place that comes to mind when considering [the Modern era] — unlike, say, Germany or France in the 1920s — it should be. The presence of Ford in the city and Booth in the country was enough to make Michigan ground zero for the Modernist experiment [...] making the state home to perhaps the most diverse and best-preserved collection of early Modernist experiments in the world. — The New York Times
A look at Michigan's history in the Modernist movement and the story it tells for our future. M.H. Miller traces three main convergences in the state: Henry Ford's first Model T factory, the Cranbrook school's presence, and numerous influential architects most notably Albert Kahn and Minoru... View full entry
More details on Ford's adaptive reuse of Michigan Central Station reveal that Snøhetta has been commissioned as the lead designer as part of Ford's $1 billion capital improvements project. Tasked with re-envisioning the company's Headquarters and Research Campus in Dearborn, Michigan, the firm... View full entry
Yesterday, Ford Motor Company announced its long-rumored plan to buy the abandoned Michigan Central Station and restore it as hub for its future mobility ventures. The news quickly created a sense of awe across metro Detroit. [...]
On Tuesday morning, Ford laid out the details and made the purchase official in a public ceremony.
— The Verge
Rumors about Ford's intentions to purchase the iconic but dilapidated Michigan Central Station first surfaced in March, and now it's official: the automaker ('scuse me, mobility company) celebrated the announcement with a festive party on its new property hosting performers and city officials... View full entry
The Cranbrook Academy of Art announced today that Gretchen Wilkins will be the new Head of the Architecture Department and the institution's ninth Architect-in-Residence. Amy Green Deines, the dean of Cranbrook Academy, praised Wilkins as “a collaborative leader with strong connections and a... View full entry
An 800-foot-tall centerpiece is coming to Detroit's resurgent downtown as the city continues to build momentum about three years after exiting the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. — Chicago Tribune
Detroit continues its steep climb back to normalcy and growth. As one of America's hardest-hit areas by the Great Recession, Detroit unemployment was running nearly three times as high as the national average in 2009 at a staggering 28 percent — and the city was bleeding population, losing... View full entry
“I try to be the face that I was looking for growing up,” Brown said. “So if I go into a room or an auditorium and just one person is interested in architecture, then I’ve accomplished my mission.”
The name comes from a milestone this past August, when the 400th African-American woman became licensed as an architect. There are 110,000 licensed architects in the country.
— Michigan Radio
Raised in Detroit, architectural designer Tiffany Brown won a 2017 Knight Arts Challenge grant for her project “400 Forward”, which aims to bring in more black girls and women into the field of architecture and urban planning. According to Brown, only 0.3 percent of U.S. architects are black... View full entry
While Saarinen’s groundbreaking works gave him international prominence, many people don’t realize that his earliest architectural and design laboratory was in Michigan. — New York Times
John L. Dorman, for the travel section of the New York Times explored Michigan's modern architecture, and more specifically, buildings by modern architect Eliel Saarinen and his son Eero. He reports visiting the Saarinen's house designed by Eliel and the first buildings realized by Eero, such as... View full entry
By now, it’s a relatively familiar narrative: over the course of the last few decades, there's been a mass return to urban centers from their outskirts, resulting in a field of abandoned strip malls and big box stores. What to do with these contemporary “ruins,” however, remains an open... View full entry
Autonomous aerial vehicles have a host of applications, researchers say. Large ones can be used for commercial transport and national security. Small drones could survey disaster sites, inspect infrastructures like bridges and wind turbines, gather environmental and atmospheric data, and deliver packages, for example. Package delivery goes beyond Amazon orders. — The Michigan Engineer News Center
University of Michigan’s College of Engineering is adding an outdoor fly lab for testing autonomous aerial vehicles to the university’s spate of advanced robotics facilities. Designed by Harley Ellis Deveraux, M-Air will be a netted, four-story complex situated next to the site where the Ford... View full entry
Gearing up for another eventful school year this fall? Archinect's Get Lectured is back in session. Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any upcoming lectures you... View full entry
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has announced criminal charges against six more people—including the state's former water quality chief—in connection with lead-contaminated water in the city of Flint. [...]
All six people are current or former state employees in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services or the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. [...]
"these individuals concealed the truth. They were criminally wrong to do so, and the victims are real people."
— npr.org
Get situated with Flint's water crisis here:Dispatch from Flint: How architects can help, on Archinect Sessions #54Should the children of Flint be resettled?The crisis in Flint and why architects should care about decentralizing our water systems View full entry
Nearly 40 percent of Detroit residents live below the poverty line. In many cities, poor people rent — but the home ownership rate here is high. After the 2008 housing crash, it took the city of Detroit five years to start reappraising homes — and poor homeowners like Hicks, who lives on disability, struggled to pay their taxes. Over the past decade, there have been more than 100,000 tax foreclosures in Detroit. — Marketplace
For more news from the Motor City, check out these links:Previewing the 2016 Venice Biennale: the United States' "Architectural Imagination"Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: a healthy dose of dissent from Detroit Resists, The Architecture Lobby and more"Bleeding Rainbow"... View full entry