Filed under Lectures …

Apr 05 2012
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Events, Installations, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

URBAN FUTURES — “PROVOCATIONS : Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse”


rogueHAA is pleased to announce the next event in its 2011-2012 panel discussion series: “Provocations: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse”

“URBAN FUTURES”
April 21, 2012
Panel Discussion: 6pm-8pm
Reception to follow: 8pm-9pm
Lafayette Park Retail
1565 East Lafayette, Detroit

URBAN FUTURES will explore the role of large scale urban visions, and consequent realities, in post-industrial cities. The legacy of Modernist urban renewal projects is largely a story of failed aspiration, economic rationalization and displaced populations. Yet despite the controversy surrounding its implementation, Detroit’s  Lafayette Park development has achieved many of the goals of Modernist planning and urban renewal, creating arguably one of the most vibrant and diverse neighborhoods in the city. Does this speak to the unique conditions of Detroit? Does Detroit offer similar opportunities for avant- garde planning and large scale urban interventions today? What successes and sacrifices accompany the Modernist social agenda, and are there lessons to be learned as we seek to engage in equitable and sustainable redevelopment here and in other post-industrial cities?  Continue reading →

Apr 05 2012
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Events, Installations, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

“INSIDE LAFAYETTE PARK” \ Design Exhibition

 

rogueHAA is pleased to announce the collaborative event, “INSIDE LAFAYETTE PARK”.  This multi-event design celebration will occur between April 14-22nd and is co-curated by The University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture (UDMSOA), Lawrence Technological University (LTU), and Wayne State University, and in conjunction with rogueHAA, Preservation Detroit, The Art Deco Society, and the Detroit Creative Corridor Center.  Continue reading →

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Jan 01 2010
Detroit Regeneration Strategy, Events, Lectures
by Melissa Dittmer

CRAIG WILKINS POST LECTURE DISCUSSION

 

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do”-Elvis Costello

lecturesHAA : Event 4.   With the tempo of a beatnik and a black turtleneck sweater to match, Craig Wilkins free-formed one December evening before an intimate crowd at the Johanson Charles Gallery.   Neither traditional presentation nor musical jam session, his lecture entitled “Dancing about Architecture…Part 3”, ebbed and flowed in accordance with the accompanying music.  Miles Davis.  Nelly.  John Coltrane.  Lil’ Kim.  Brazilian Salsa.  Public Enemy.  Each musical style provided a unique lens in which to view an architect’s design process and their resulting built form.  Brazilian Salsa directly influenced Gaudi’s Parc Guelle.  Josephine Baker provided inspiration for both Adolf Loos’ Villa Baker and Le Corbusier’s City of Algiers.  James Brown infiltrated South America, thereby evolving the favelas of Brazil.  Hip Hop music prompts Rural Studio and the dramatic sampling of found materials.

Dancing about architecture.  As the fourth presenter in the lecturesHAA series, Craig Wilkins has worked internationally as a designer, project architect, urban designer, and academic. Providing history for his lecturesHAA topic and further clarifying the “…Part 3” portion of his lecture title, Dr. Wilkins explained that he has previously written and lectured extensively on hip hop architecture and “The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on race, space, architecture, and music.”  His December 15th discussion expanded these previous investigations.  Wilkins immediately acknowledged that in the most simplistic terms, architecture can take a literal form of music…imagine a rock n’ roll museum in the shape of a guitar or treble clef.  However, providing a catalogue of crude musical interpretations was not the goal of his lecture.  Instead, he analyzed the musical genres of jazz, salsa, and hip-hop, ultimately proposing that architects should evolve their own antiquated design process by implementing specific portions of the musician’s creative process. Continue reading →

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

CRAIG WILKINS — EVENT 04 “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 04: CRAIG WILKINS :

Dr. Craig L. Wilkins has worked nationally and internationally as a designer, project architect and urban designer. He currently serves as the director of the Detroit Community Design Center at the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Dr. Wilkins has written and lectured widely on a variety of topics, from hip hop architecture to the prospects of globalization on African spaces. Dr. Wilkins’s work has culminated in his most recent publication, “The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on race, space, architecture and music” which has been recognized with numerous awards, including the prestigious 2008 Montaigne Medal for Best New Writing. Continue reading →

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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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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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