Architecture Commons^™

Detroit: Revitalizing Urban Communities, David N. Fite

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between architecture and planning in Detroit. The relationship between these two disciplines has reinforced gross inequality in socioeconomic status over many decades. It has been compounded by racism which planning policy and Architecture exploited during the 20^th Century for private interests. This impacts the built environment at all scales. Today division is reinforced through small details such as how handrails are placed on benches, but it extends to planning metropolitan areas, and how they are divided up into city and suburb. At the scales between, both architecture and planning reinforce the segregation within their …

Creating A Learning Community For Community Engagement For Detroit Practitioners, Virginia Stanard, Aaron Goodman, Madhavi Reddy

Community Development Practice

Through the support of the Community Development Society (CDS) Innovation in Community Engagement Fellowship, the Detroit cohort of fellows convened with the goal of building individual and community capacity through a yearlong, hands-on educational initiative that addressed innovative engagement within a community context. Connected by the Master of Community Development program at the University of Detroit Mercy as faculty, students, alumni, or community partners, the fellows embarked on a project entitled “Creating a Learning Community for Community Engagement for Detroit Practitioners.” The objective of the project was to explore the intersection between community engagement, democratic decision-making, and community development in …

A Bite Of Architecture: Farm-To-Table & Dining Experience, Steven Yang

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The way people experience a city is its food and architecture. It has the most cultural impact, by creating its own unique social interactions and experiences within our urban fabric and food. The architecture provides a sense of place and creates an artificial framework that ties in through harmony in the environment through research and design by promoting where food is coming from? How to grow and prepare food, and creates a unique dining experience. The project intent is not to create a food hub, but to create a framework that builds from a food hub all the way to …

Re-Treeting Detroit: Return Of A Blighted City Back To Nature, Nivedita Keshri, Shreeya Shakya

Architecture Senior Theses

Detroit’s complicated history of corruption, racial tensions and economic decline have made conventional strategies for growth, repopulation and infill inadequate for dealing with ongoing and overwhelming urban vacancy. Dealing with voids within shrinking cities have been difficult because it lies outside the existing experience and vocabulary of urban planning, architecture and socioeconomics. Our thesis explores the potential of voids within a blighted city. We recognize the value in intentionally keeping voids as voids in a city and allowing the built environment to take a step back and allowing “nothing” to take its place.

What is the current conditions of these …

Re-Wildin Detroit: Return Of A Blighted City Back To Nature, Nivedita Keshri, Shreeya Shakya

Architecture Thesis Prep

Detroit’s complicated history of corruption, racial tensions and economic decline have made conventional strategies for growth, repopulation and infill inadequate for dealing with ongoing and overwhelming urban vacancy. Dealing with voids within shrinking cities have been difficult because it lies outside the existing experience and vocabulary of urban planning, architecture and socioeconomics. Most have failed to recognize that voids are not useless and there is potential value in keeping them as voids.

What is the current conditions of these voids? How do we make use of it without erasing it? How can we revisit ideas of a city that embraces …

The Motor City – Stimulating Architecture, Jacob Levine

Architecture Theses

Iconic architecture around the world is defined by the impact it has on the patrons. The goal of this thesis is to use architecture to capture the feeling of motion and movement. Motion is inherit in the concept and exploration of this architype. The program for the architecture is a car museum in Detroit Michigan. Detroit is one of the most historic cities in America – and the last thirty years have been rough on Detroit. A modern powerful work of conceptual architecture could change the city of Detroit and begin to build a brighter future. The creation of destination …

Detroit Works Long-Term Planning Project: Engagement Strategies For Blending Community And Technical Expertise, Toni L. Griffin, Dan Cramer, Megan Powers

Publications and Research

In January 2013, civic leaders, community stakeholders, and residents came together to release Detroit Future City: 2012 Detroit Strategic Framework Plan, a guiding blueprint for transforming Detroit from its current state of population loss and excessive vacancy into a model for the reinvention of post-industrial American cities. Three years prior, the U.S. Census had reported that the city had lost 24% of its population over the last decade and had experienced a 20% increase in vacant and abandoned property, bringing total vacancy to roughly the size of Manhattan. In addition to physical and economic challenges, Detroiters had also acknowledged significant …

Introductory Review To The Special Issue: Shrinking Cities And Towns: Challenge And Responses, Andreas Luescher, Sujata Shetty

Andreas Luescher

Cities and towns facing sustained population loss are being researched and discussed more than ever before. Once the focus of a relatively small group of architects and urban designers in Europe, these cities and towns are now being studied by scholars across the world. In a range of contexts - from a large, iconic city like Detroit, to a small village in Japan (described by Thomas Feldhoff in this issue), this phenomenon is being observed in unexpected places, and far more frequently than once imagined. A wider population is engaging in this as well, as discussions of the future of …

Detroit's Theaters: A Study Of Significance And Reuse, Leigh Schoberth

All Theses

Detroit is frequently a case study for contemporary urban and economic issues. A specific component of Detroit's built fabric that requires preservation attention in light of the city's struggles is the undervalued theater district. Several of the theaters in the central district of Detroit are now threatened by demolition after years of neglect. The history and significance of the theaters, as well as careful consideration of the range of acceptable preservation treatment options, stand to inform a preservation plan for these and other cities' theaters. One of the options is the reuse of the theaters. While the large scale of …

Introductory Review To The Special Issue: Shrinking Cities And Towns: Challenge And Responses, Andreas Luescher, Sujata Shetty

Architecture and Environmental Design Faculty Publications

Cities and towns facing sustained population loss are being researched and discussed more than ever before. Once the focus of a relatively small group of architects and urban designers in Europe, these cities and towns are now being studied by scholars across the world. In a range of contexts - from a large, iconic city like Detroit, to a small village in Japan (described by Thomas Feldhoff in this issue), this phenomenon is being observed in unexpected places, and far more frequently than once imagined.

A wider population is engaging in this as well, as discussions of the future of …

The Company: Carnival Urbanism For Shrinking Cities, Brandon Peterson

Architecture Master Theses

THE COMPANY is a framework of urban intervention that seeks to stabilize shrinking neighborhoods through a large number of small-scale, temporary occupations of vacated buildings. Its process of quickly phasing in architecture and program over time, through testing and experimentation, is preferable to the slow, top-down planning of large-scale, more permanent initiatives. Its identity is that of spectacle and pleasure. Its architects are designers, developers, planners, sponsors, eventholders and actors.

The historic neighborhood of Brush Park in Detroit, Michigan is the first testing ground for THE COMPANY’s interventions. Its forty-four abandoned buildings will be adapted from post-industrial leftovers into catalytic …

Detroit: Reproductive City, Marielle Vargas

Architecture Senior Theses

A Systems motivated test, coupling infrastructures and food processing for a productive city core.

After Autopia: Visions For Light Rail In The Motor City, Lori Brown, Brett Snyder

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Autonomy In The Institution: An Institute For Detroit Techno And Rave Culture, Peter Heasley

Architecture Senior Theses

"The institution, in physical form, requires spatial and visual separation to replace its socio-economic history in the urban and physical landscape. An Institute for Detroit Techno will test this assertion through the establishment of techno music as an autonomous art form and the manipulation of the physical context of the project through collage and situating the project along the freeway, which is an autonomous spatial condition within the city."