De/Motown: A Retroactive Arcology for Detroit

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*ESSE (ONSA AND 'REG -AHONEY


Utopian megaprojects of the 20th century, from Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse to Paulo Soleri’s Linear City, are too often negated for their megalomaniacal, individualistic plan for the future. With the tabula rasa as their method for organization, such projects lack the contradictory, contextual, democratic, “organic” process of city building. Contextual, yet admittedly still megalomaniacal, this project uses the city of Detroit as a found object (rather than a blank canvas), forming the basis for a retroactive arcology that redefines urban density and circulation. The central building district, a skyscraper-graveyard of immense stratified floor area, is renewed and transformed by elevated thoroughfares and programmatic diversity into a compact, self-sustaining urban entity.


Setup: Node Cities

The experiment begins with an act of urban contraction: as the city rapidly loses population with the decline of the automobile empire, Detroit is restructured around a series of nodes. Population departs from the feeble, dwindling fabric of suburban lots, to reinhabit structures of massive bulk (factories,business districts, and megamalls). Former components in the machine of the Motor City are transformed into independent arcologies that build on the unique possibilities of their preexisting structures. The salvage industry flourishes as the city dismantles the uninhabited zones between nodes. Detroit becomes a center, at least temporarily, for precious metals and recycled materials. Eventually, the regrowth of forest around the nodes leads to a budding lumber industry.

‘MOTOR CITY’

‘DEMOLITION CITY’


Case Study: Central Business District

Decentralized Network

Distributed Lattice Network The central business district is reinterpreted in section. In the old CBD, circulation between structures was limited to the street level, reinforcing corporate isolation and preventing interaction across lofted spaces. The oppressive, inefficient, and energyintensive elevator is now replaced by a sloping viaduct that connects seamlessly to types of ground transport (rail, pedestrian, bicycle), and that makes movement between elevated levels possible. This extension of the street coils around the CBD, crossing itself several times to form a lattice-work of external movement.


SKY FARMS

CIVIC/FLATS

VIADUCT COIL

INDUSTRIAL BAND

GEOTHERMAL TUBES

METRO-COIL MAP

A coiling metro line runs in a continuous, selfintersecting loop. Station stops are named by altitude. The new topography opens up the office towers to new programmatic possibilities. As the viaduct punctures each tower, it disrupts and redefines previously homogenous commercial space. Lateral communication at multiple levels brings an urbanity to the former-stratified, isolated spaces. Vertical mechanical conduits, once limiting the floorplans of each tower to a repeating type, can now be rerouted laterally, allowing for a greater diversity of spaces and programs.

UNROLLED SECTION


SKY FARMS STUDIOS/FLATS CIVIC/COMMERCIAL FACTORY BELT JUNK DEPOT/LUMBERYARDS

Notions of center and periphery are applied in section: civic, commercial, and educational facilities stand about the grand viaduct, the piano nobile of the city. Apartments, offices and studios take advantage of the light above. Traditionally peripheral programs, agriculture, industry and energy, are located on the opposite extremes of the section. Industries form a band of continuous activity below the coil; hydroponic farms proliferate the highest strata; and the town’s energy is supplied by wind at the peaks and geothermal energy in the caissons of the skyscrapers.

HYDROPONIC SKY FARMS

WORKSHOPS



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