Inspired by the flexibility of uses for houses in Detroit, this project stages an opera as a house, the house and its dramas of occupancy and vacancy, demolition, and re-purposing, as
an opera. As indicated in the project title -- “House Opera | Opera House” -- the project pursues multiple relationships of physical structure to performance. Instigated by architectural designers working with a multi-disciplinary arts collective, the House Opera | Opera House project situates built form in active relationship with choreography, costume, music, language,
and drama.The first phase of construction gutted the interior, removing a level of the house and side wall to make an open theater space that serves as a platform for Detroit storytelling. The exterior is wrapped in two-tones of Tyvek to create super graphics. From structure to security to the patterns of wrapping, the design process has moved between coded algorithms
and iterations of potential operations. To be exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2016, the Algorithmic Recitative: House Opera at MoCAD takes the opportunity to develop the urban scale research component of the House Opera project.