Skip to main content

Visiting Detroit

By
A few weeks ago I visited Detroit for the first time while in the area for a friend's wedding.  We hear so much about Detroit these days, as the poster-child for urban decay, that I must admit I was pretty interested in seeing it for myself, and wondered what I would find there.

My impression is that it's a fairly small city, with a small, well-developed core but extensive, decaying suburbs.  We drove a short ways out to visit the Heidelberg Project, and saw some of the crazy inner-ring suburban emptiness near there (countless vacant lots, overgrown fields that used to be houses, etc), but most of what we saw in the downtown area wasn't too shabby.  We missed getting to experience the Eastern Market by arriving about an hour too late, which was disappointing, but instead got some very tasty ice cream at Neveria la Michoacana.  That was definitely an adventure for us and really fun!


All around the downtown area we saw signs of new buildings, construction, and city pride, so I don't think anyone should count out Detroit in the long run.  For now, though, it's a good place to buy tons of land/buildings for cheap.  It's hard to say exactly what the city will look like when it's done with all this upheaval, and I personally would not want to live there - too far from "real" urban centers, too cold, and too, well, Midwestern.  But not a bad place to visit!  And we didn't even get over to Ann Arbor, or to the Henry Ford Museum (Dymaxion car, anyone?), or to the Ford plant (where you can see them make trucks!  live!), or to a variety of other cool-sounding things.  Next time!




I really enjoyed getting to take the Detroit People Mover (began operation in 1987) on its 20-minute loop around downtown; architects notoriously like seeing buildings from a bird's-eye view, and I'm no exception.  I was especially intrigued to see the station signs were in English, Spanish, and Arabic.




Architectural highlights of our tour were the GM Renaissance Center (1977) by John Portman, One Woodward Avenue (1962) by Minoru Yamasaki, and the Lafayette Park Apartments (1956) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  Detroit is a great place to see examples of International Style and late Modern architecture.  The Renaissance Center was one of the craziest buildings I've ever been in; in 2004 they installed a new walkway around the interior that helps visitors understand where they are, but before that it must have been very disorienting to visit.  It's a ring of round towers, all alike, with floating round "pods" hanging from the walls and a multitude of levels.  Amazing concrete work, though.

Renaissance Center, with the added Wintergarden (by SOM, 2004) in the lower left.
Inside the Renaissance Center


One Woodward Avenue


an "Aztec"-styled skyscraper

Lafayette Park


I hope I'll be back sometime in the future, to see how things change and to see more of the city!

Postscript July 11th:  Here's a nice NYTimes piece on how things are going in Detroit today.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Voter's Guide: Local Elections 2016

By
I spent a long time researching different local races and some of the ballot measures here in Santa Clara County.  In case you're on the fence or want some further information to guide your voting, I've compiled my thoughts here. Selection Methodology I have three tiers for selecting  candidates. 1. Alignment on Issues:  I will choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with me on the issues I think are important. 2. Experience and Education:  All other things being equal, I will choose the candidate who has the most knowledge of what is required for the position, either through education, previous experience, or active participation in similar positions. 3. Women and Minorities:  All other things being equal (#1 and #2 above), I will choose candidates who are women or minorities in order to increase the diversity of voices of our elected officials.  It's my own personal form of affirmative action. The Issues We're fortunate enough to live in a place
Post a Comment
Read more

Housing Affordability in the Bay Area: An Architectural Perspective

By
The Bay Area's housing crisis has gained a status akin to the weather: We can't help but mention it whenever two or more Bay Area residents are gathered together, and we feel there's equally nothing we can do to change it.  But instead of the general praise given to the area's weather, there is general despair about the state of housing.  At least among the twenty-something set and construction industry professionals who make up my peers and colleagues, there are few answers and much criticism for the way we live here.  It's not dense enough, public transportation is a sham, and housing costs are outrageous.  Many of my peers agree that they would not live here at all except that their spouse/significant other works in the tech industry, without whose salary they could not afford to live here, but whose worth is so valued here that it makes little sense economically to live elsewhere.  Here in the Peninsula it's just as bad as in San Francisco ("the city&
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

By
Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s.  Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion.  In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects.  Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali
1 comment
Read more