Zoned

With my project I am looking into the near future of Detroit.  They currently have a draft plan of a new zoning map for the center of the city.  I am targeting the zones which are marked for medium to high levels of density including some industrial, mixed-use, live-make and "innovation" productive and ecological.  I am choosing these zones for their proximity to both the city center and the water front.  The interventions will work best if they are already placed in areas with pedestrian circulation and high density.  I do want to look into other areas where the interventions will act as a catalyst for the area increasing density rather than relying on existing activity.

Codes and regulations are rougher to figure out.  Detroit follows the 2012 IBC and all the codes which fall under the ICC with a Michigan amendments including the Michigan Construction Code.  Where my project falls is a blurry line as it may not be a fully enclosed building that would have to abide by all the typical codes.  However the general construction must follow the IBC including foundation depths, proper snow load accommodation etc.  Aside from that genre of code and accessibility requirements there are few regulations that would apply.

The Place

In my previous post I decided to use Detroit.  For me this step seemed logical in that I wanted to do a project that was the seed to good spaces and urban growth.  Detroit needs help.  The city lost its major industry and a huge amount of its population.  While the jump to  memorial/future was a bit out of character of my previous ideas I still think that Detroit is a viable option for my project.  My driving forces have been, urban, creation, and connections.  I believe that placing my project in Detroit opens up the opportunity to reinvigorate the city as a whole and possible look to the future where Detroit finds its new industry and redevelops as people begin to flock back to the city.

Perhaps that is what my thesis becomes.  An architectural narrative of the decline and reinvention of Detroit.  How can I bring a new architecture and utilize it so that it will ignite the city into what it could become post-automobiles?  I will need to begin by analyzing Detroit while it was a flourishing city to its current state as well as contrast it with other cities to determine how its fabric is alter based on its former industry.   Just from examining it through Google Earth it is clear to see the many holes left by vast parking lots.  What can be done to go through the city with a finer grain and create a cityscape that is for the human scale?

The project could take the form of a detailed research and eventual intervention. The project could be a master plan paired with a few key buildings or a series of smaller follies that are woven into the city.  I think that by creating something which engages with people it will aid in opening the city up to pedestrians.

What is it?

It has been a tough road to find my thesis thus far, but as the days go on my ideas are coming more into focus and details are falling into place.  I am not completely certain of my project but I am certain of the key elements.

• I want to place my project in Detroit in the semi-distant future.
• The underlying theme is based in lost cities
• The project will be some sort of memorial, museum, renewal
• The project will be a sort of an ode to the lost city and a hopeful catalyst for new life within it

While I have not keyed in on a specific place in Detroit I have studied its current urban fabric.  Unsurprisingly there is an apparent affinity for automobiles as huge parking lots fill up the city's core.  I imagine that my project will fit somewhere along those lots bringing a new edge to the city.  I am placing my project in a future where Detroit has continued to decline as people either leave or move to the city's core.  While the Detroit we have known is lost a new city is emerging.  Clearly this future is not certain but I am choosing to use this outlook for my project.  I will try to ground the project in what Detroit has been facing as it has lost its industry and use what has happened to project how it could play out.

In some ways I think this project should stand as a figurehead of what the city is attempting to re-develop as.  However because it will be in a city that has lost much of its population and industry it won't be a shining white stone building towering over the city.  I imagine it will have much more grit to it.  I also want to explore the "unsettled" architecture as a means of developing this project further; because it will be the fresh start to the city it will be setting the tone for the new built environment.  

For my project I think I will need between 50,000-75,000sqft.  This will include an exhibition spaces, studio space lobby, various service spaces, auditorium, and surrounding grounds/landscape.  This project will align fairly closely to a museum but I don't want it to be limited to that idea I want the project to not only display works but somehow be actively involved in the new order of the city.

The Experience

I have been working on finalizing the concept for my thesis.  I spent the past week reading Deluze and about Reima Pietila.  I am still not sure what project will be born from my research quite yet but I have a grasp on what I want to do and how I want it to affect its environment.  I want my project to glorify the unexplainable knowing that physical objects have that can't be translated into words.  Pietila designed exploring "form of form" the way I take this to mean is that his designs were influenced by themselves in a way.  The form was not based in function or aesthetic necessarily.  That idea is both bizarre and intriguing to me.   The forms create their own forms and while these forms may not be directly relating to any specific function they are created through a unique intuition that can only come from a physical creation.

Don't make a building

After the installation review last week I am both more confident and confused.  It is a tragic aftermath of creative editing.  I have a much more positive idea of what I am not doing but have not quite focused on what it is I am doing.  I do know that I am not doing a building that is just a box with my interests forced inside.  I do know that I am not dealing explicitly with the suburbs any more.  I do know that I am not necessarily focusing on just urban planning.  I do know that I will be making.

The topic of this post is about "What forces acting upon my project?"  What is acting on my project is what I feel is a need to return to a higher level of connection to the things we have.  We have so much because it is so easy to get and seemingly to produce.  I know that when I purchase things rarely is it that I take the time to consider how it was made, the intense process taken to create that thing.  Because I don't consider the making I don't always see the value.  It is so easy to just buy thing after thing and not really consider the time and effort taken into making it.  If I were to have to make the things I owned I wouldn't own anything superfluous I would only have the necessities.   But that is not the world I have lived in.

More and more I gain a need to reduce and improve my own collection of things but I know it is because I have had to go through the process of making, making imaginary buildings, making tiny building like things, making drawings, etc.  I gained a level of consideration I'm not sure people generally have.  I do think that this drives the suburb culture.  Suburbs are at the core disconnected from the beating heart of cities and civilization. The main obstacle in my project will be to understanding how to make people care.  Care enough that they forgo the ease of quickly produced products, buildings, and lifestyles and spend time and energy in making.  I have to fight the ease of the lifestyle we have and make people care the way I have been to care which I think can only really come about through making.   How can making be re-instituted into the fabric of our culture?

To me this pairs well with our reading from this week.  Diagramming has always been the way we have been taught to communicate in our major.  Diagrams hold a unique power that a paragraph does not.  It is visual and immediate.  There are layers of information piling over each other to reveal something beyond itself.  Creating diagrams requires a knowledge of your subject and in some cases trust in your own instincts.  To me one of the great examples are parti diagrams.  After being a TA I can say that parti diagrams are hard for students to fully grasp because they are so precious with their work.  They don't want to do anything wrong, but design is about failing and learning from that failing.  Parti diagrams are a great tool to see those failings and fix them quickly.  You can describe a great design all day but in order to get anywhere you need to just start making.  The moment you stop trying to be perfect and you just start doing you can see your own progress as you refine your craft.

Moving forward I think I am going to put my own advice to use and stop worrying about being perfect with my work.  I need to make, I need to make a lot.  I need stop trying to force this project into being and just let it grow.  Of course I still need to get work done, but I think I can do that without resorting to shoving my ideas in a box and calling it a thesis.

New Idea

For the last two years I have been obsessed with urban theory; naturally when it came time to consider a thesis I was quick to turn to praising the city and cursing the suburbs. But after this week I am less certain about this topic. This last week I have learned a lot about my project. Or at least a lot more about how I need to approach my project. Through the process of designing and making my thesis installation I had to really focus on my project and why it was important. I have been caught up in trying to layer ideas one after another without fully connecting them together

Through the past week as I designed my installation it became alarmingly obvious that I needed to simplify, desperately. The ideas I had thus far were not fitting together, there is not time to make them work; I need to edit them. I don’t think there is need for yet another attack on suburbia. There are endless evils in the cookie cutter neighborhoods but they have been strewn out over books and articles, what could my project say or explore that hasn’t already been scrutinized? I want to use my project to uphold the benefits of the city, but also to explore communities. When I had to think about why my project was important I thought about why architecture was important to me. An enormous part of why I have become so passionate about architecture is because of studio.

There are few fields where you work so closely with other students for so long. Spending hours creating and designing around other people doing the same develops unique relationships. There is something about the process of making that deeply affects people. Communities built in this way are the foundation of many great neighborhoods and cities. Cities offer the greatest built environments and strong and vibrant communities that are hard to come by elsewhere.

How can space better suit the needs of an emerging neighborhood? How have neighborhoods formed in the past and how do they grow currently? I want to evaluate the importance of making in a community and of a community in a city. The importance of connections and what can the built environment do to spark them. At least that is currently the idea I am working off of. I am not sure if I got to the root of my why but I do think I got much closer. I can’t do project that I know the answer to, I need to do something that helps me see something new.

Rehab the Suburb

In the past week I have spent quite a bit of time trying to evaluate what about my research thus far was useful and how it could become a thesis.  There is already so much research and so many books about the negative effects of suburbs and the positive of cities.  Jeff Speck has made his mark in urban theory by writing and speaking out on this subject.  How could my thesis project add to this argument in a meaningful way? 

                I do want to stay along this line of thought however because I do care about it so much.  In the last 510 class Randy mentioned that we should pick an idea that not only inspires us, but makes us made.  Mad enough that we can’t help but try to fix it.  That is what suburbs are to me.  I can’t stand that they continue to develop along the outskirts of our cities.  I hate that cities are viewed so often as obscenely dangerous and no place for a family.  I want to help save the image of cities; I want to destroy every little ticky tacky box build along senselessly winding roads.  I need to find a project where I can help create the transition from the suburb back to the city.

If the suburbs left for good the next question is what will we do when the suburbs are emptied and we are left with hundreds of Stepford ghost towns?  We as a society are already moving back to the city slowly.  The land is useless for agriculture after being developed so we will have to repurpose the empty streets.  Perhaps the project I need to be working on is an escape plan and rehabilitation of the American suburb.

                As I have been working through processing my ideas and research I have been working on the installation.  This weekend I have to create a small art installation inspired by my thesis thus far.  In such a sort amount of time it is difficult to decide what I will be able to accomplish.  I think that I want to do something that relates to the rise, fall, and rise of great cities.  Somehow showing the evolution of city life as well as incorporating craft vs. produced.  Cities are amazing and are slowing developed over decades.  They are planned to a degree but the real character and heart of a city comes from how it differentiates from anywhere else in the world.  Cities are crafted by their populace.  Suburbs on the other hand are pumped out by developers as quickly as possible.  They are produced like a car in an assembly line.  Hopefully I will be able to transform 15” of wall space into these ideas.