Posted by Melissa Dittmer …

Nov 01 2009
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Events, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

LARS GRABNER POST LECTURE DISCUSSION

“Desire is the very essence of man.”  This quote by 17th century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, opened Lars Gräbner’s lecture this past October 13th at the Johanson Charles Gallery.  As principal architect of VolumeOne Architects and full time faculty member at the University of Michigan’s College of Architecture, Lars has traveled extensively throughout the world.  Most recently, his architecture studio spent the summer in Europe, touring successful post-industrial regions and composing a ‘generic urban strategies menu’.  His lecture titled, “The City of Desire”, offered a tantalizing prospect.  As these projects have already succeeded in regenerating post-industrial cities, can these same urban strategies apply to Detroit?  Can Detroit become a “City of Desire”?

Suburban Destiny.  To fully address these questions, Lars outlined one of the fundamental conflicting desires of modern man – to live in the city or to live in the suburbs.  As Lars stated in his lecture, the desire to leave the city is strong, originated by decades of aggressive marketing campaigns.  Continue reading →

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Oct 30 2009
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Interior Design, Projects
by Melissa Dittmer

PRO BONO \ THE HEIDELBERG PROJECT

pro bono publico – for the public good or well being, and more commonly understood in the world of professional services as ‘free’.

DEFINING PRO BONO.  We all understand disparities in wealth and access to professional services.  To some, these disparities compel a moral imperative to provide professional services to under-served communities.  Many architects regularly perform pro bono services for a variety of ends.  While certain firms focus on needs of the international community, such as Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and his disaster relief housing for Japan, Turkey, and India, others focus on issues specific to the United States.  Auburn University’s Rural Studio has been designing and building housing and civic buildings in rural Alabama since 1993, while Yale University has an even longer tradition of volunteering their design/build services to their local community.  While globalization has increased the reach and scope of the architect, it has also brought to the forefront the major issues that plague our societies.  A great need exists globally and locally, and architects are more capable than ever to affect change. Continue reading →

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Oct 01 2009
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Research
by Melissa Dittmer

DETROIT PORT AUTHORITY – PART 2 – THE ECO-INDUSTRIAL CRUISE LINE

The Eco-Industrial Cruise Line – Hybrid Sustainability.  Just as urban design cannot be thought of simply as architecture on a larger scale, sustainable urbanism is not merely a collection of ‘green’ buildings, spaces, and infrastructure upgrades.  The transformation of America’s former industrial capitals from beleaguered shrinking cities into thriving urban centers depends not only on an agglomeration of high tech interventions – such as solar and wind farms, green roofs, electric cars, etc – but on a radical paradigm shift in the nature of land use, density, transportation and the role of our industrial heritage on future policy.

This blog post outlines such a paradigm shift, narrating the proposed evolution of Detroit’s post-industrial region through the introduction of Eco-Industrial Tourism via an Eco-Industrial Cruise Line. Continue reading →

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Sep 13 2009
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Events, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

LARS GRABNER — EVENT 03 “Challenging Detroit: (Re)generating Urbanism”

lecturesHAA is dedicated to creating a broader creative discourse through open and collaborative dialogue. The program includes lectures and discussions throughout the year that will consider important contemporary design issues associated with the urban environment.

The initial program for 2009 will be “Challenging Detroit: (Re)generating Urbanism.” This program will provide an important platform for consideration of innovative, multidisciplinary strategies designed to help the city not only create reinvestment and redevelopment, but also begin to regenerate the social, economic and environmental attributes that define it. Now, more than ever, we need to come together to understand how we can effectively participate in the thoughtful, creative regeneration of Detroit.

While it is relatively unconventional for a professional design firm such as Hamilton Anderson Associates to create and coordinate a lecture program such as this, we feel that by leveraging our resources and interests in design, we may more fully establish a fertile exchange of ideas that helps to bridge the gap between the creative community and the community at-large.

The public is encouraged to attend these free events. Please return to rogueHAA for future dates and topics.

EVENT 03 : LARS GRABNER :

Lars Gräbner practices architecture in the city of Detroit and has been a resident of the city since 2000. After four years as a head designer at Studio Libeskind in Berlin, Germany, and then teaching at the ETH in Zürich, he accepted a position at the University of Michigan, teaching architectural design, construction and urbanism. Intrigued by Detroit, he decided to contribute to the development of the city. Continue reading →

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Aug 21 2009
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

SWEET JUNIPER POST LECTURE DISCUSSION

 

 

lecturesHAA : Event 2.  When Jim Griffioen began his August 18th lecture at the Johanson Charles Gallery, every folding chair was filled, additional people stood along the perimeter, and a few kids were heard playfully giggling amongst the adult masses.  All were there to witness Sweet Juniper’s first official lecture.  Jim’s heavily frequented blog, www.sweet-juniper.com, often ruminates on a multitude of themes that compose his intimate Detroit experience.  The lecture promised to be a larger, more congruent narrative that tied his sometimes disparate topics together.

Sweet Juniper!   A cacophony of revolutionary images flashed upon the screen:  Michigan Theatre Parking Garage, Greenfield Village, Joseph Gandy’s “Bank of England in Ruin”, Detroit ruins, men in yellow sports jackets and seer sucker shorts, Michigan Central Depot, Conan the Barbarian, Detroit ruins, another classical painting “Syria by the Sea”, Roman Ruins, English landscape gardens, Detroit ruins, open fields surrounding a solitary house, and finally more Detroit ruins.  His Detroit photographs are stoic, beautiful, and common.  Jim is the first to admit that hundreds of CCS art students, musicians, architects, designers have been taking these same images for decades.  Abandoned houses left to grow feral.  Iconic landmarks ravaged by looters.  Schools shuttered and forgotten.  Books mounded on a pvc tile floor with a single tree growing amongst the detritus.  These images rarely contain humans – an occasional stray dog or errant pheasant – but hardly a human.  It is this void, the lack of human life, which results in a blank narrative, an image in need of a story.  Continue reading →

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Jul 16 2009
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Events, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

SWEET JUNIPER! — EVENT 02 “Challenging Detroit: (Re)generating Urbanism”

lecturesHAA is dedicated to creating a broader creative discourse through open and collaborative dialogue. The program includes lectures and discussions throughout the year that will consider important contemporary design issues associated with the urban environment.

The initial program for 2009 will be “Challenging Detroit: (Re)generating Urbanism.” This program will provide an important platform for consideration of innovative, multidisciplinary strategies designed to help the city not only create reinvestment and redevelopment, but also begin to regenerate the social, economic and environmental attributes that define it. Now, more than ever, we need to come together to understand how we can effectively participate in the thoughtful, creative regeneration of Detroit.

While it is relatively unconventional for a professional design firm such as Hamilton Anderson Associates to create and coordinate a lecture program such as this, we feel that by leveraging our resources and interests in design, we may more fully establish a fertile exchange of ideas that helps to bridge the gap between the creative community and the community at-large.

The public is encouraged to attend these free events. Please return to rogueHAA for future dates and topics.

EVENT 02: Sweet-Juniper! : Jim Griffioen, Writer and Photographer

Jim Griffioen is a former corporate litigator turned writer, photographer, and stay-at-home dad. Every day thousands of people from around the world visit his website (sweetjuniper.com) to read his thoughts on parenthood, contemporary culture, and the state of his adopted home of Detroit. Griffi oen’s photography has been featured in Harper’s, Vice, Landscape Architecture, New York, and CS Interiors among other publications. He has appeared on American Public Media’s The Story with Dick Gordon, CBC’s national arts and culture Program Q, as well as in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker.com.

August 18
6pm Johanson Charles Gallery
1345 Division
Eastern Market

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Jun 22 2009
Events, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

DESIGN 99 POST LECTURE DISCUSSION

On June 23rd, the first lecture in a series of HAA sponsored events occurred in a small Eastern Market art studio, The Johanson Charles Gallery.  During the lecture, Design 99’s co-founders Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert presented a sampling of their past and current work.  As their projects flashed over the make-shift projection screen, the sound system petered in an out of existence.  These underground conditions seemed perfectly analogous to Design 99’s daily challenges and each of their project’s specific circumstances.  Despite the late start and the subsequent technical difficulties, the 40+ Detroit locals were enraptured, appreciative, and focused on the discussion at hand:

-       Current urban issues require change

-       Context specific design catalysts operate as community focal points

-       Focal points spark community discussions

-       Community discussions initiate resolution of urban issues

Each of Design 99’s projects followed this framework with varying physical, social, ecological, and economical results.  One such example is their highly publicized project, Power House Project. Continue reading →

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