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Gentrification. It is a word that we hear with increasing frequency in contemporary discussions about American cities. But what does that word really mean? And, even more importantly, what does it mean in the context of the region that I live in and love – the Rust Belt? [...]
It is important to be clear about the meaning of this increasingly ambiguous term, because what needs to happen in the vast majority of urban neighborhoods in the legacy cities of the Rust Belt is far less ambiguous.
— City Observatory
"Many critics of Rust Belt gentrification are holding cities to an unreasonable standard, and placing them in an impossible situation. If much of the city remains poor and run-down, this is proof that the city does not care, and is not trying hard enough. If, on the other hand, parts of the city... View full entry
It’s said that there are two kinds of architects: those who will only live in vernacular homes and those who would only live in a home of their own design. Now I know why. My partner Laura and I ignored both options and bought a townhouse designed by Mies van der Rohe. With my colleagues at Dash Marshall, made limited renovations after devouring all of the books about Lafayette Park, looking for clues as to what Mies would do if given a do-over. — Medium
Bryan Boyer writes about renovating a Mies Van Der Rohe townhouse in Lafayette Park, Detroit. "First, the original condition of these houses was not actually that nice when you got down to the small details like closet hardware, appliances, and lighting. Bathrooms and kitchens from the 1950s were... 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
Detroit was the first North American city to obtain such a designation, which joined it to UNESCO's Creative Cities Network — a group 22 international cities whose aim is "to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. — Detroit Metro Times
Earlier this week, president Trump announced the U.S's withdrawal from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias and mounting arrears. The decision could affect Detroit's 'City of Design' designation, earlier awarded to the Detroit Creative Corridor, a non-profit initiative to strengthen Detroit's... View full entry
Architecture is a creative media that analyzes what is, while imagining what could and should be. Located in Los Angeles’ Art District, A+D Museum's current exhibit, The Architectural Imagination, is a showcase of re-imagining and rebuilding the outdated industrial urbanscape of Detroit... View full entry
The firm of famed Detroit architect Minoru Yamasaki is returning to the city, seven years after it was forced to close.
The Seattle-born architect lived in Detroit from 1945 until his death in 1986. He launched his own firm in 1950, which survived him until 2009 when it closed due to financial problems.
Yamasaki’s most famed work is the World Trade Center twin towers, although he contributed many buildings to the Detroit skyline, including the One Woodward office tower.
— Michigan Radio
"I think we’re really interested in that kind of momentum that Detroit has now," Robert Szantner, a long-time employee of Minoru Yamasaki's original firm until it closed, told the Detroit Free Press. Szantner had bought the intellectual property, including the name, out of receivership in... View full entry
The project, at the cost of more than $800 million, is set to break ground in early 2018 and transform a mostly vacant two-square-block area bounded by Monroe, Bates, Cadillac Square and Randolph.
The project will include 818,000-square-feet of office space, 170,000-square-feet of retail space and 482 residential units. Original plans called for a 20-story office tower, but the latest details show plans for 35 stories.
— The Detroit News
Bedrock released new renderings of the Monroe Blocks project in downtown Detroit, which will include a 35-story office tower fronting Campus Martius. Described by the developer as “Detroit’s first high-rise office tower in a generation with over 480 residential units, full of public spaces and... View full entry
On Tuesday Gunnar Birkerts, Detroit-based Latvian-American architect passed away at the age of 92. Born in 1925, in Riga, Birkerts was a graduate of the University of Stuttgart in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1949. He began his architectural career with Perkins+Will before... View full entry
Talk about redeveloping the long-vacant Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown area heated up again Thursday during an announcement about this year's Detroit Homecoming, which will hold the first significant private event in the 104-year-old train station since the mid-1980s. [...]
"(Redevelopment of) the depot is going to take a marathon, but we're not at the beginning of the race, we're a few miles into it," said Matthew Moroun, whose father, Matty, bought the building in 1995.
— crainsdetroit.com
"I said, 'there's one thing: Every time I read a damn national story about Detroit, there's a picture of the train station with the holes in the windows as the international image of the city's decline,'" Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is quoted saying, recalling his conversation with billionaire... View full entry
With a surplus of unused money, Michigan became the first state in 2013 to demolish homes using money intended to save them. The idea was that demolitions would revitalize neighborhoods by increasing the property values of surrounding houses, attracting new homeowners, and reducing crime rates. — Detroit Metro Times
Detroit's neediest homeowners were supposed to receive federal assistance to save their homes as part of the Treasury Department's seven-year-old Hardest Hit Fund. However, Michigan squandered its originally allotted $498 million by creating unnecessarily stringent requirements, according to a... View full entry
Today we finish off our series of conversations, or "Mini-Sessions", with architects and designers in LA and Detroit, sharing our conversation with Lorcan O'Herlihy. Lorcan is an Irish-American architect, with offices in Los Angeles and Detroit. His recently published book, Amplified Urbanism... View full entry
This week we are releasing a series of conversations, or "Mini-Sessions", with architects and designers in LA and Detroit, in partnership with the Los Angeles Design Festival. The festival will be taking place in Downtown LA from June 8 to 11th. Today we're sharing my conversation with Sean... View full entry
This week we are releasing a series of conversations, or "Mini-Sessions", with architects and designers in LA and Detroit, in partnership with the Los Angeles Design Festival. The festival will be taking place in Downtown LA from June 8 to 11th. Today we're sharing my conversation with Andrew... View full entry
This week, starting today, we are releasing a series of conversations, or "Mini-Sessions", with architects and designers in LA and Detroit, in partnership with the Los Angeles Design Festival. The festival will be taking place in Downtown LA from June 8 to 11th. First up is with Edwin Chan of the... View full entry
