Motown Mobility: Reimagining the American Dream of Surbubia (Part I)

Motown Mobility

A vision of

and resillience

00 Problem Statement

01 Introduction

02 Future of Transportation

04

Autonomous Architecture

4.1 Metabolic Systems

4.2 Metabolism: Precedent Studies

4.3 Future Cities: Precedent Studies

05 Motown Modified

5.1 Mapping the Motor-city: Schematic Strategy and Proposed Site

5.2 Methodology and Research Conclusion

5.3 Themes: Retrofuturism

06 Bibliography

Problem Statement

New Urban Spaces for People and Autonomous vehicles

In America, many cities in the Rust belt are still trying to recover from the effects of deindustrialization. A prolific example would be Detroit, known as the motorcity because of its once-powerful automotive industry. What was once a booming metropolis is now a hollow city, with vacant buildings, plots of land and decaying neighbourhoods. The sprawling nature of the city is conducive to its urban decay.

However, plans and funding have kicked in to revitalise Detroit in the recent years, with large corporations moving in downtown. There is also reinvestment in rebuilding the city’s neighbourhoods. With these plans in mind, what would then happen to its post-industrial sites?

This thesis aims to re-develop Detroit’s neighbourhoods for a new kind of living. It also seeks to challenge the urban-sprawl growth model which has exacerbated its downfall.

Set in a future where electric and autonomous vehicles are the norm, this re-development of the neighbourhoods will seek to integrate spaces for cars and humans, as well as redefine architectural mobility and autonomy. This posits a new form of urban/ architecture space where humans and electric vehicles exist in closer contact than in the past - and seeks to explore the possibilities and understand the challenges of this condition, crafting a new future for the Motorcity of tomorrow.

Concept image for Packard Belt,by Javier Galindo

View South from Sibley St. along Park Ave., Detroit, 1991.

Photograph by Camilo José Vergara

01 Introduction

The Post Industrial landscape

The Rust Belt

In America, there is a specific geographic region from New York through the Midwest that was once dominated by manufacturing. It is known as the Rust Belt, and that term is synonymous with regions facing industrial decline and abandoned factories rusted from exposure to the elements1. These regions were once booming hubs of economic activity as a result of U.S. industrial growth and development, known as the Manufacturing Belt. As a result of this industrial boom, factories, assembly plants as well as homes started sprouting up throughout these cities, along with droves of people moving into the area seeking employment, which peaked in the 1950s.

A key example of this is Detroit. Since it’s founding in 1701, the key to Detroit’s industrial growth has been the role that transportation has played in political, social and economic affairs2 This was due to it’s prime geographical location that enabled the city to take advantage of both travel by water and rail.

The Industrial Boom

Prior to World War One, Detroit automobile companies began to form as a result of access to raw materials, technology and numerous machine and tool shops. It’s auto industry bloomed as the United States entered World War One, because of the demand for trucks and tractors to transport the goods they produced to the East Coast for shipment over to Europe2.

By World War I, Detroit had become an industrial manufacturing hub due to the overwhelming demand for war supplies and automobiles.

By 1920, Detroit had become one of the largest cities in America due to masses of people moving there in search on defense industry jobs. As a result, Detroit experienced severe shortages of housing and transportation. Even though industrial production was slowed down by the depression, it quickly picked up and shifted into an all time high in World War II2. This was where Detroit hit its economic and industrial peak.

DETROIT

Featuring the Rust Belt

Post-Industrial Suburban Flight

Detroit’s early industrial development, and much of what followed, was characterized by the centralization of factories. The end of World War II marked a new post-industrial era, where the region began to deindustrialize-factories began to close, downsize, or relocate (Sugrue)2. Much of Detroit’s population and industry’s flight to the suburbs occurred in the 15 years that followed after World War II. This era in Detroit’s history was characterized by a deteriorating downtown, transportation congestion, inadequate housing, racial conflict and industrial exodus. These factors encouraged or pushed many families out of Detroit while federal programs pulled them towards the suburbs.2

Car-centric city and Suburban Sprawl

With the wealth accumulated from the war, Detroiters started buying more homes and automobiles2, leading to the boom of the automobile industry and suburbs. This resulted in traffic congestion in the city, which led to the introduction of the Federal Highway Act of 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to build a national system to move goods and people(at the cost of neighbourhoods like Black Bottom3). By then, Detroiters were armed with wealth to buy homes and automobiles so they headed to the suburbs to live and work2 This set off a perpetual cycle where the automobile industry boom brought more wealth and jobs for the people, who then bought more cars and houses in the suburbs, thus contributing to suburban sprawl and the construction of more roads and highways-which would then drive up the demand for automobiles. This economic and social development directly impacted the city’ urban development, resulting in Detroit’s notorious urban sprawl condition

Much of this suburban flight process continued throughout the following decades, and Detroit’s population declined from nearly 2 million in the 1950s to below 1 million in 2000, along with the decline of the central city2.

Higher use and demand for automobiles

Purchase

Construction

Above Diagram of Detroit’s urban sprawl cycle, by Author Right

Generative Collage, by Author References in order Top-Down, Left-Right: Map of Population change in Detroit (blue is positive, red is negative)

Historic Black bottom neighbourhood razed as part of ‘urban renewal’ Article on Detroit’s abandoned buildings

Smokey Robinson and the miracles (Pioneer Motown group)

Automotive workers on union strike A car being assembled in Detroit Sightseeing motorists pass the Ford River Rouge Plant in Detroit in 1941 – to look at strikers’ picket lines

More jobs and higher salary

More infrastructure to support

of cars & houses in the suburbs

Automobile Industry Boom

of highways & suburbs

Highways Tearing through the city as a result of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956

Maps obtained from the USGS Historical maps Collection, colour-corrected by author

1952 1968

By 1980, Detroit had the highest unemployment rate in the country(Poremba), as well as increased poverty, crime and mortality rates.

Following the suburban exodus of earlier decades, Detroit was left with an outdated infrastructure and a primarily minority population that suffered from poverty and unemployment on a regular basis. Homes, industries, and business buildings were deserted in favor of suburban areas, resulting in neighborhood and downtown degradation.

Much manufacturing and industrial jobs had relocated to suburban Detroit by this time in the region’s growth, but an even bigger part began to shift much further away, indicating the United States’ entry into a global economy. As the job market became tighter and more competitive, so did disparities between high- and lowwage jobs. When the economy picked up through the 1990s, the trend toward polarization continued, as newer suburbs were being built on the fringes of the region and older cities like Detroit, as well as older suburbs, lost more and more people. Detroit became not only the epitome of sprawl but also of racial segregation, as the process of sifting and sorting continued along class and racial lines. However, the late 1990s and early 2000s have seen a renewed interest in the birth of Detroit2

Present-day Map of Detroit’s abandoned and industrial lots

Industrial plots Unoccupied plots Motown Mobility

Redlining and other historical institutions have had long-term effects on racial segregation and economic disenfranchisement in the African-American community. Blight is passed on through the generations. Many of the same blighted neighborhoods that were studied by the Free Press in 1989 are still abandoned today.

As investments in Detroit transformed much of downtown and Midtown in recent years, a short drive up any major road — up Woodward, up Grand River, down Jefferson, up Gratiot — told a different story, and for some Detroiters, the true story: the city’s neighborhoods, where people live and small businesses call home, are still struggling.

New skyscrapers and sports venues are nice, critics said, but what about the neighborhoods? A partial answer to that question came Thursday when Dan Gilbert, the billionaire business owner and a driver in transforming downtown over the past decade, said he plans to invest $500 million in the city’s neighborhoods over the next 10 years.4

This then begs the question: How do we go about “fixing” these neighbourhoods?

e Working Port Peak Community

Detroit reaches peak population / ‘white ight’ begins

Detroit ranks above one million citizens for the rst time in U.S. Census

First mile of concrete paved roadway in U.S.

First Auto Factory by Ransom E. Olds

1925-1929: 95% of all downtown Detroit high-rises are completed in a 5-year period

Construction of the world’s rst urban freeway, the Davison (M-8)

Motown’s rst single. I-94 Freeway: Edsel Ford built

1900

1910 1920 1930 1940 1960 1970

Chrysler Corporation established, GM builds World Headquarters, world’s largest o ce

Henry Ford introduces the assembly line

Ford Motor Company is established

Henry Ford builds his rst car in Detroit

Ford Motor Company constructed on River Rouge

1950

1956: Detroit city rail service discontinued. Federal-Aid Highway Act begins to build 41,000 miles of interstate highways

In essence, a key factor in the rise and fall of Detroit lies in it being the “Motor-City”, or rather an Automotive-driven city. This has led to highways segregating and removing neighbourhoods, toxic urban sprawl, decentralisation of factories(work places) and white flight.

Could we then reimagine Detroit’s fate as an automotive city, taking a retrospective look at the “Motor-City”, and rethinking its processes through the lens of more sustainable ideas — redefining what a neighbourhood can be through mixed-use densification, with clean, autonomous vehicles that can knock down the barriers between car and pedestrian spaces, and

counter the grid-iron pattern that has segregated this once booming metropolis?

Rewrite its fate through the lens of sustainable ideas?

1980: ‘Urban Farming’ begins in vacant spaces

Detroit has 40,000 empty lots, compared with 9,800 in New York; 4-5,000 in Chicago: 8,500 in Philadelphia (Detroit Almanac, p. 295)

Detroit population falls below one million for rst time since 1930 Census

Motown Mobility

What if we can incorporate cars and transportation in our Architectural visions of sustainability, instead of dismissing them entirely?

Could re-adaptation of the postindustrial landscape provide a prototype for a new kind of living and redefining the idea of mobility in the Motor-City, hoping for revitalization?

1956 Illustration by German Futurist, Klaus Burgle

02 Future of Transportation

The Automobile-reliant city

Modern people have almost always needed to move: across a city, from one city to another, or from one continent to another.6 The quintessential American figures of the pilgrim, the pioneer, and the beatnik all defined themselves by moving. Myth or no, this quest has been central to an understanding of “America” as a land of opportunity. This striking out is also related to a desire to own poperty - a mindset that has literally and figuratively driven the physical formation of modern societies such as the united states.7 As a result, automobile-ownership has become a quintissential part of American life, more so in the case of Detroit, home of the automobile8.

Detroit’s Car ownership statistics as of 202111:

“It is estimated that as much as one half of a modern American city’s land area is dedicated to streets and roads, parking lots, service stations, driveways, signals and traffic signs, automobile-oriented businesses, car dealerships, and more. Equally significant, space allocated for other forms of transportation ultimately shrank or disappeared.”

-Dr. Martin Melosi, director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston 6

1.7 cars Per Household

Public Transit, biking, and walking are commonly understood as the ideal sustainable option for getting around in the city. Thus cars and vans will never be able to replace high-volume transit on key routes in dense areas. However, in lower density areas that cannot justify frequent rail and bus transit, the use of low-cost, on-demand systems that encourage shared rides could be prioritized.9

This is certainly the case for Detroit. On top of the need for cars to get people from place to place across the sprawling city, Detroit had gone through a series of public transit programmes which have been halted due to political and funding issues, and the current public transit infrastructure often fall short of the residents needs.10 This brings us to the question:

Motorcity Mania

A map of parking lots, roads and reported traffic accidents that occurred between 20112016 in a section of Detroit

Can a new form of automobile and usage system pave the way for mobility around Detroit?

Cars and Architecture

Cars fundamentally change the way we move in the world, and the way we occupy space. They require protection from elements sometimes, and become inhabitants or our built environment. On top of that, cars have a kinship with architecure-in a sense that they are both aesthetic yet functional objects, that often fulfill certain visual, cultural and functional needs. In

this chapter, I seek out the different ways architecture has been affected by the emergence and reliance on the automobile, which will then establish themselves as precedent case studies for this thesis.

The precedents defined in this list are by no means exhaustive, especially for the case of Building for Cars.

Sites made more accessible by car

Levittown Long Island, NY 1947

Sizeable Garage facing Road Mass Produced, Assembly line of repeated models

Large Setbacks from Street

Levittown is the epitome of the American suburb - a symbol of post-war suburbia with its mass-produced homes. It was designed wih the automobile in mind, from the masterplan of the suburbs to the interface between the housees and the street.

Curvy Streets for cars and varied views

Shape similar to the Iconic Volkswagen Beetle or Citroen models which came later

Image Credits: Levittown Public Library

Architects that designed cars

Shape similar to the Iconic Volkswagen Beetle or Citroen models which came later

from Street

Le Corbusier, who famously called a house “a machine for living,” was fascinated—even obsessed— by another kind of machine, the automobile. His writings were strewn with references to automobiles. Le Corbusier moved beyond the theoretical in 1936, entering (with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret) an automobile design competition, submitting plans for “a minimalist vehicle for maximum functionality,” the Voiture Minimum12

Le Corbusier Voiture Minimum, 1936 Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion Car, 1933

The Dymaxion car was a revolutionary design by Buckminster Fuller that was aligned with his design philosophy of sustainability, technology and human-centric design, which is “completely central to architecture today,”- Norman Foster13

Simple Abstract governing geometries like the Golden Rectangle

A minimalist vehicle for max. functionality

Worked with sculptor Isamu Noguchi to create wind-tunnel plaster models

Rear-mounted V8 engine, FWD rear steering with third wheel

Shaped

for minimal

aerodynamic drag

Driver sat dangerously exposed in front

Image Credits: Dezeen https://www.dezeen.com/2018/08/27/eightforward-thinking-ideas-buckminster-fuller-exhibition-los-angeles/ https://www.cardesignnews.com/articles/concept-car-of-the-

Buildings designed for cars: Historical Precedents

Housing Units Parking Garage

Marina City Bertrand Goldberg Chicago, IL 1964

Tallest Housing Tower at that time

Fluid Curvilinear Forms from Concrete: durable material that can withstand weather

In the early 60s, many Americans had started to take “flight” to the suburbs for a more open and accommodating way of life. Marina City was based on an attempt to bring people back into the city and fight the sprawl model of development. Bertrand Goldberg’s motivation was to design a “city within a city” that could fully accommodate people’s everyday needs and activities near their homes. It was a method of bringing suburban commodities and ease of access to an urban setting.

When the Marina City was completed, it held a

whole host of programs, consisting of a theatre, gym, swimming pool, ice rink, a bowling alley, stores, restaurants, and a private marina for the residents. These were done in an attempt to emphasize the fact that a small urban area can offer just as much, if not more amenities and services as the suburbs.

Image credit: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/brutalist-buildingschicago, Vincent Desjardins

Advertisement for Marina City

Buildings designed for cars: Historical Precedents

Temple Street Garage Paul Rudolph Portland, ME 1959

Wood-formed concrete creates fluid connection between the parts

The six-story Temple Street parking garage is fully made by reinforced concrete using organic forms to connect the different elements, giving expression to the sense of motion implicit in the freedom of the automobile. Paul Rudolph imagined parking structures as vital infrastructure for urban life-not just loading docks, but a hub where people come and go.

As quoted by Paul Rudolph, “The two most potent influences on the form of twentieth century cities are sheer volume and the American preoccupation with mechanized transportation of all kinds. Americans

will spend any amount of money for throughways, but parking is usually ignored.

Could it be that a proper facility for the parking of automobiles is a blessing in disguise, since it gives large-scale elements which would define precincts for various usages?

The scale of the automobile and its configurations are alien to traditional building types, but are potentially powerful unifying forces. The integration of building forms with raised and lowered throughways and parking structures leads to the true megastructure14.”

Image credit: https://hiddenarchitecture.net/temple-street-parking-garage/,

Swooping ramp created with respect to scale of the car and turning radius at a particular

Moritz Bernoully

Garage as part of the city, Rendered by Paul Rudolph

designed

Modern Precedents

The Miami museum garage was the brainchild of architect and curator Terence Riley, Bringing together these designers from around the world, who drew inspiration from the surrealist parlor game, Cadavre Exquis. This game involved a collection of images assembled by various artists with no regard or knowledge of what the other artists have drawn, producing one image whose components don’t necessarily match but flow together as one playful composition.

Part of a collaborative effort by five designers,

WORKac’s portion of the Miami Museum garage is titled Ant Farm – faces 1st Avenue and celebrates social interaction, sustainability, art, music, and the landscape. In an ant colony-inspired display of human activity, miniaturized public spaces - a garden, a lending library, art space, and playground - and their connecting circulation spaces appear and disappear behind a perforated metal screen that provides visual contrast, shade, and protection15

Facade Plan of the entire parking Garage, showing the individual designer’s facades in a combinef scheme. Drawing by J.Mayer.H

Buildings designed for cars: Modern Precedents

111 Lincoln Street

Herzog & De Meuron Los Angeles 2019

Haphazard-like stacking creates the perception of instability

Floors taper to a single knifeedge corner

Image credit: Iwan Baan - https://iwan.com/portfolio/1111-lincoln-road-miamiherzog-de-meuron/

Structure looks precariously thin in one direction

Retail at bottom and middle

Internal and meanering stair creates surprising and chance encounters throughout

Situated in one of the most active pedestrian areas of Los Angeles, 1111 Lincoln road is highly inspired by Brazillian Tropical modernism: interior courtyards, raw structures providing shade while containing smaller enclosing sub-elements. The irregular columns gives a sense of precariousness, while casting a varied facade condition. It holds 300 parking lots, replete with eleven shops and four restaurants, and luxury residences spread vertically throughout the building. The openness of the structure helps prevent the structure from feeling like a typical dark and cold carpark, instead creating a large open concept that celebrates

the curious mix of human and car spaces, as well as the diverse programs that inhabit the spaces.

Delivers on the promise of OMA’s Jussieu Library (1992) as an internalized and folded urban street and plaza

Evaluating Precedents

Marina City Towers Bertrand Goldberg 1964

Temple Street Parking Garage Paul Rudolph 1962

Description

• Mixed-use, City-within-city high rise Structure

• Anti-Sprawl model, reinjecting density

• Mono-concrete Material expression

• Parking Structure as vital infrastructure for urban life-not just a loading dock, but connecting hub

• Swooping ramps designed with respect to scale of car and turning radius and a particular speed

• Mono-concrete Material expression, using boardformed concrete to produce curvatures

Advantages

• High density, mixed use idea was successful in combating sprawl in Chicago

• Highly sought after property presently

• Parking structure designed to celevrate, not hide cars

• Clear expression of functional form throughout

Disadvantages

• 19-storey winding ramp parking structure turns parking into a laborious urban ascent

• “Valet only” parking service may not be the most efficient model of mobility

• Parking area not designed for human accesshaphazard “human lift” to bring valet to desired level

• Connects different elements of the city

• Expressed Paul Rudolph’s belief in the automobile forming a new kind of urban condition

• Designed with careful attention to vehicular movement

• Behemoth scale of project not comprehensible on human level

• Apart from the commerical programs on the bottom floor, the other levels are for only parking

Miami Museum Garage WORKac 2015

1111 Lincoln Road Herzog & De Meuron 2010

• Wrapped in metal panel system offset by 4 feet

• Cutouts creating magenta space - “ant-farm of activity”

• contains public programs like climbing wall, slide, library, daycare

• Iconic graphical expression

• Injects new form of life in an otherwise banal structure, through graphical and programmatic intervention

• Collaboration between different designers provides and interesting variation of spaces

• There is still a separation between human-vehicle spaces.

• Human programs injected in the facade conceals the vehicles and parking spaces

• Columns that flare and rotate to create destabilizing effect

• Floor slabs that look precariously thin

• Wide, open expression celebrates diverse internal programmes

• Ramps and staircases run through to create little pockets of spaces

• Injects new form of life in an otherwise banal structure, through programmatic intervention

• Mix of programs helps transform perception of parking garage

• Open slabs and columns celebrates the vehicles and mixed-spaces

• Stairs and ramps designed for “chance encounters”

• Somewhat luxurious development, exclusivity

• Hard, sharp edges in vehicular spaces and circulation paths are not inherent to vehicular movement

Autonomous Urbanism

Breakthroughs in technology are generating a host of new mobility options that give households the freedom to make car trips without needing to own a car. These include ride-hail (taxi-like) services, such as Lyft or Uber; “microtransit” (van or shuttle) services; and carshare services that are bookable on demand, such as Zipcar8.

These services will get substantially cheaper and convenient once self-driving technology is widelyimplemented. Indeed, no transportation technology holds as much potential to transform car-ownership as the self-driving vehicle. Car commuters will be able to use their time more productively, and groups who currently cannot drive, such as people with visual impairments, may achieve greater mobility. Self-driving vehicles can be programmed to obey all traffic rules and defer to pedestrians8. Furthermore, self-driving vehicles will eliminate accidents caused by human error, which accounts for more than 90% of them16 Such negligence includes speeding, aggressive/ reckless driving, distracted driving, drunk driving or sleeping at the wheel17.

Furthermore, the paradigm shift from using petrol/

In order to clarify the possibilities and limitations of these technologies, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) have categorized AV systems into five levels, according to their ability to operate in real-world conditions18. Each of the five levels of automation hold different levels of opportunity and risk to people both inside and outside the vehicle. Today, we are already operating on level 4 automation with companies like Waymo providing driverless ride-hail services in Phoenix, Arizona19.

Despite the known challenges and danger, this thesis will operate on the realm of level five and beyond, to anticipate and imagine the possibilites of fully-automated mobility in Detroit.

Present Levels of Automation

Diagram from NACTO Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism

Co-Driver

Trip Planning

Self-driving vehicles plan their route by accessing maps, traffic data, road and weather conditions, toll information, and more. They continuously refresh all that data throughout the trip, in real time, via an internet connection.

In the trunk of the vehicle lies the brains of the operation: the computer that processes all this data through algorithms and converts it into driving decisions (when to stop, back up, accelerate, slow down, change lanes, and more). It is a very powerful computer, akin to a mobile, multi-server data centre.

Feeling Feet

Existing vehicle GPS systems are typically accurate within one or two metres; a self-driving car requires greater precision than that. Its position estimators, moun ed on wheels, can count tire revolutions and sense lateral movements. This data is layered atop detailed digital maps that include road grades, speed bumps, and curb-cut locations to determine the car’s exact position.

A Promising Mobility Advancement

Panoramic Vision

A mini dome mounted on the car houses a LIDAR unit to help the vehicle “see.” Using laser beams rather than radar waves, LIDAR generates dynamic, three-dime sional imagery for as far as 60 metres in every direction. The mini-dome also contains video cameras that recognize traffic lights, signage, pedestrians, and cyclists.

AI-Eyes

A system called “computer vision” processes the combined data from the LIDAR, radar, and camera systems to identify street users; classify them as pedestrians, vehicles, or cyclists; anticipate their movements; incorporate road rules; and make driving decisions.

Lessons learned and shared

All this data is cumulative, just like years of driving experience. As the car encounters and navigates new or unusual situations, it learns from them for the next time — and shares this learning with every car in its fleet.

Roughly two-thirds of all crash fatalities are caused by speeding, falling asleep at the wheel, and drunk or distracted driving — hence the push to build cars that drive themselves. Self-driving vehicles never speed, fall asleep, drink alcohol, or get preoccupied with anything other than safely shuttling passengers to their destinations.

Eyes on the ground

Front-and ear-mounted radar units determine the exact distances between the vehicle and other moving objects. Additio al cameras and LIDAR sensors can also be mounted low on the vehicle.

Information source: Sidewalk Labs MIDP Vol. 2: Mobility

Diagram by Author

Literature Review: MIDP Mobility Plans by Sidewalk labs and Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism by NACTO

Streets and highways today reflect a century of investment in auto-oriented infrastructure that has failed to provide reliable or safe urban mobility

To understand some common practices and guidelines that have been set out for Autonomous Urbanism, a literature review was conducted on Sidewalk Lab’s MIDP and NACTO’s Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, and relevant research isights have been charted out in this chapter.

The main principles for deployment and design for autonomous and electric vehicles include designing for safety, data-driven decision making and using technology as a tool.

Designing for optimised mobility

• Vehicles should be optimised to travel at consistently slow speeds, allowing for pedestrians to safely cross streets at close intervals

• What was once “jaywalking” should simply be “walking”

• With decreased need for vehicle storage, residential streets can become new public spaces and front yards

• “dynamic curbs” - Sensor-enhanced curb system can determine different pricing and uses by priority

• Lighted pavement (akin to runway lights) to signify public pedestrian use of “dynamic curbs” during non-peak periods

• Pavements with embedded inductive chargers, turning streets and parking spaces into charging stations

• Monthly subscription mobility packages

Accessway: 16 metres

Priority mode: Cyclists

Priority speed: 22 km/h Accessways are designed primarily for cyclists, with traffic moving at bike speeds. This may be applied to Neighbourhood Main Streets, that are often active, lively places.

Laneway: 11 metres

Priority mode: Pedestrians

Priority speed: 8 km/h Laneways are the foundation of pedestrian spaces, and be applied to the new residential streets. The decreased need for vehicle storage can enable them to be new public spaces and front yards.

Street type section views8

Flush curbs with vehicle speeds at bicycle pace, pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles interact semalessly by using separated but flush lanes

Reinforcing Safety

Movable street furniture can be used to reinforce safe site zones in a mixed curbless environment

Low-Speed access

Self-Driving Vehicles should travel at cycling speeds to ensure accessibility and comfort for pedestrians

Mobility infrastructure

To support mobility, infrastructures like bike sharing, charging facilities should be in place.

Play Streets

Residential streets are primarily for residents to enjoy, and street amenities like heated pavement and movable furniture can help activate these informal frontyards into shops, gathering spaces, fairs etc.

Green Infrastructure

Trees, bioswales, and planters reduce stormwater runoff, while roviding shade and evaporative cooling for the neighbourhood

Pedestrian Priority

Pedestrians rule the streets, and self-driving vehicles could be routed there by real-time navigation systems. Only Local traffic and deliveries permitted, limited at 10mph.

Information source: Sidewalk Labs MIDP Vol. 2: Mobility

Diagram by Author

0600-1100 hrs

Morning

Before the peak of the morning rush, freight deliveries arrive to stock stores with their goods for the day. By 7:30, delivery vehicles give way to vehicles dropping off employees, amny enjoying breakfast or coffee in a parklet on their way to work.

1600-0000 hrs

Evening

The evening rush stops delivery activity as street and vehicle capacity is shifted to move people instead of goods. Passenger movement continues into the evening as people grab dinner or drinks, pick up children, or head to evening events. Automated evening and late-night delivery activity allows for easy movement of large goods on underutilized streets.

1100-1600 hrs

Mid-day

Late morning brings some deliveries of packages ad mail to businesses and residents. At noon, the lunch rush begins, bringing many people to street vendors to enjoy their mid-day meal. By 2:00, most diners are back inside and light delivery activity continues until the evening rush.

0000-0600 hrs

Late night

Late at night the curb prioritizes freight vehicles. Passenger movement is at a minimum through the early hours of the morning, leaving more space for increased delivery services in cities. Delivery ease is increased through the use of nearby storage lockers. In the morning, freight makes way for transit vehicles.

Diagrams by Author Information from NACTO Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism

Designing for the Autonomous Age

No doubt has the presence of the automobile affected the way we live, work and play. More importantly, as seen from the previous chapter, cars have had a great influence in the way we plan and design our spaces.

However, the recent years have seen a rise in development and deployment of clean energy, selfdriving vehicles20. Clean energy electric cars are already making it’s way into the mainstream automotive market. As technological progress in the electrification of two/three-wheelers, buses, and trucks advances and the market for them grows, electric vehicles are expanding significantly. Furthermore, policies have been implemented to boost the production and purchase of these vehicles in recent years21. As the market gears up for autonomous vehicles, we will need to start considering the implications this will have on the built environment, and perhaps project this vision further to reconsider and define the meaning of mobility in an autonomous age.

Share of Level 4/5 autonomous vehicles for new vehicle sales by scenario 203523

China United States Euro5* Japan 20% 40% 60% 80%

Base case Disruptive

Meanwhile in Detroit...

Detroit has been able to employ autonomous vehicles to aid in the city’s economic recovery. AV startups Argo AI and May Mobility, as well as car manufacturer Ford and Google’s sibling firm Waymo, are presently testing AVs in the city. Moreover, hundreds of AV-related firms from across the world are flocking to the city in the hopes of collaborating with major American automakers24

The state of Michigan has launched the Michigan Office of Future Mobility under the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, which is charged with leading the strategic coordination of all mobility-related initiatives across economic development, workforce, and infrastructure efforts in the state to secure Michigan’s status as a global leader in autonomous, connected, electric, and shared future mobility.The department also hosts the Michigan Council on Future Mobility and Electrification25

Detroit has been able to capitalize on its Motor City heritage to become the global leader in AV manufacturing. Waymo opened the world’s first dedicated AV production plant by repurposing an abandoned automobile factory26. Both Ford and GM have also announced large investments to develop AV and EV manufacturing in the city27.

The city is also taking efforts to ensure that it can offer the staff that AV firms demand. The Michigan Mobility Institute is retraining vehicle industry workers in AI, robotics, cybersecurity, and other relevant fields, and is collaborating with community colleges, trade schools, and online learning platforms to develop new skilledtrades such as AV repair, connected fleet management, and AV safety drivers. Together with university partners, the Institute has developed a Master of Mobility degree program, which will focus on developing a systems-level understanding across areas including software development, AI machine learning and data sciences28

Information obtained from KPMG’s 2020 Autonomous Vehicles Readiness

Toyota Woven City was a proposal by BIG, where the first phase of development on the site of a former car-factory will be home to 2,000 people who will test the vehicles, robotics and smart homes in a “realworld environment“

“With people, buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test connected AI technology, in both the virtual and physical realms, maximising its potential.“-BIG

The development will contain a network of streets that caters for transportation at three different speeds:

1. Main streets: autonomous vehicles

2. Smaller streets: Personal transport i,.e. bicycles, scooters and Toyota’s i-Walk

3. Pathways : fully pedestrianised.

The blocks are arranged in groups around central courtyards, connected by streets and linear parks

“The resulting pattern of porous 3X3 city blocks creates a multitude of different econiches for social

life, culture and commerce”

The residential buildings will contain in-home robotics to “take care of basic needs and enhance daily life” and sensors connected to AI to check resident’s health.

The Curvilinear forms, with smooth, continuous ramps seem to suggest design for accessibility by electric/ autonomous vehicles.

Its form seem to be inspired by some of the historical precedents: Fiat Lingotto Factory and Temple Street Parking Garage

Image credits(top to bottom): BIG, Larry Speck, Tumblr: Dimitris Polychroniadis inspiration Blog

Designing for the Autonomous Age Precedent Studies: Park Tower - Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis

“The time-consuming suburban commute is transformed into a seductive urban ascent, complete with panoramic views.”

- Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis29

Park Tower was a proposal by LTL Architects, imaginign a future of clean and quiet electric cars as a catalyst to the “drive-up Skyscraper”. This skyscraper consists of parking garages intertwining with mixeduse sequence of programs in a double-helix manner, creating a drive through parking garage sandwiched between inhabitable spaces.

It was inspired by the mix of suburban pattern developments and urban building type+footprint, creating a hyper mixity- Downtown Athletic clubesque concept injected with electric cars.

There is also a possible reference to Marina City Towers by Bertrand Goldberg - Vertical city concept, with parking and automotive ascent sandwiched between programs, instead of the first set of levels on the lower portion

Image credits(ALL): Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis Architects http://ltlarchitects.com/park-tower

Designing for the Autonomous Age Precedent Studies: Spaces on Wheels - Space 10

Space10 designed seven autonomous vehicles as a visual exploration of how fully autonomous vehicles could one day enable a more fulfilling, everyday life. They proposed Spaces On Wheels, a project that envisions everyday spaces moving around, bringing places to people and vice versa. It operates by booking via mobile app.

Café, Coffee On The Go

A mobile space which enables people to catch up with a friend over a coffee when they need to keep moving on a busy day.

Office, Flexible Workspace

Working on the go to alleviate time lost from commuting Healthcare, Mobile Treatment Solves ‘the last mile’ problem by getting medical professionals to visit people in need, not the other way around.

Farm, Fresh Delivery Farm on Wheels brings local food to people wherever they are, all while enabling local farmers to expand their businesses.

Play, AR Joyride

Augmented reality windows enable people to try a new game in AR as they travel, or experience educational content that responds to and reflects their surrounds.

Hotel, Urban Sleepover

Hotel on Wheels is an electric vehicle powered by clean energy which contains all the perks of a traditional hotel room. It takes people to their destinations while they’re getting their shut-eye and enables them to reduce their carbon footprints.

Shop, Pop-up Store

While brick and mortar stores enable retailers to connect with many people, some don’t live close enough to retail locations to go there that often. And although online shopping typically lets people buy, it doesn’t really let them shop—which is where Shop on Wheels comes in. Shop on Wheels will come to people wherever they are—letting them try, buy and explore on their own terms.

Image credit: Space10, Spaces on Wheels

https://space10.com/project/spaces-on-wheels-exploring-a-driverless-future/

Designing for the Autonomous Age Precedent Studies:

Citycar - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Developed by MIT’s Media lab, Citycar is a sustainable answer to driving in downtown metropolitan areas- by providing a foldable, space -saving electric car that does not congest and pollute dense urban areas. For this to be widely implemented, recharging Infrastructure is required all over the city, as well as the integration of Smart Electric Grids. This Mobility-On-Demand System would reduce the usage of private cars entering downtown cores, serving only necessary travel needs.

Image credits: MIT Media Lab, CityCar

Re-greening sidewalks with space saved from parking.

Designing for the Autonomous Age: Proto-Typologies

Rounded edges for easier movement

Radar units to detect objects

Inductive Charging embedded

PLUG-IN VEHICLE AS EXTENSION OF LIVING SPACE

Plug-In Vehicle as an Extension of Living Space

Autonomous vehicles can be easily used as an extension of spaces, plugging in directly to a home unit and charged wirelessly via inductive charging systems embedded in the ground. Users can seamlessly enter their vehicles without ever having to leave the house. This eliminates the need for extraneous parking garages and setbacks.

Sleeping with the car

The advent of clean energy automobiles makes it possible for electric vehicles to inhabit human spaces without fear of pollution from exhaust fumes. Some may even go as far as sleeping next to their e-cars.

MOBILE PARKING IN THE LIVING ROOM PARKING

PLUG-IN

Embedded Sensors to align vehicle

Entranced from elevated road

Plug-In Mobile Farm for Kitchen Inspired by the “Farm on Wheels” concept by Space10, this prototype imagines a scenario where local food producers can expand their businesses by seamlessly plugging-in delivery trucks/carts to larger kitchens as part of a “food subscription service”, ensuring a fresh supply of produce.

Parking on the Roof Houses may be built along embankments, or road networks may be elevated to keep the ground and neighbourhood comletely open for pedestrians. In such situations, the Autonomous vehicles can be parked on the roof instead, with the inductive charging platform embedded in the roof ( and also possibly be solar-powered).

Rounded edges for easier movement round corners

PLUG-IN MOBILE FARM FOR KITCHEN PARKING ON THE ROOF

Rounded edges for easier movement round corners

Solar-Panels

Foldable, Space Saving Vehicles

Inspired by the CityCar concept by MIT, foldable, space saving vehicles will require less parking space, creating more efficient use of spaces.

Drive-Up Dining

Inspired by the lunch scene from The Fifth Element, this prototype imagines the windows of houses doubling up as an open counter for Residents to dine from drive-up food trucks.

PLUG-IN MOBILE OFFICE

Plug-In Mobile Office/ Workshop

This prototype redefines the concept of “Work from Home” or “ Home Office”, which has become ubiquitous thanks to the recent pandemic. What if your office/ workshop can be plugged into your home, and then travel out to other sites/spaces when required?

Mobile Co-Living

Co-living has become something synonymous with millenials, especially single, professionals who seek more vibrant sociable lifestyles. This prototype draws inspiration from these people’s need to constantly move around different places, and desire to live/work in different environments. What if they can easily relocate without having to hire movers?

Image credit: Adrian Tim https://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/ neighbourhoods/2004/03/home_zones_and_.html

03 Creating the neighbourhood

Living Typologies in Detroit

Detroit is one of the cities that contains the most singlefamily, detached housing units. Even as the city lost over a million people, its mix of housing remained skewed heavily in favor of the single-family detached dwelling, with over 65 percent of all occupied residential lots inside the city being used for this purpose.

Detroit’s reliance on single-family detached housing even exceeds the U.S. average of 60 percent for all residential structures everywhere, both cities and suburbs28.

The national obsession with single-family detached homes has had negative environmental consequences, costing residents and the city more in maintenance every month, and makes it more difficult to achieve efficient urban densities, where more integrated, walkable communities can be created and sustained31

Diagrams by Author

Agri-hoods

A decade ago, a resurgence of urban gardens and farms sprouted a new agricultural trend around the country. And while many of them continue to thrive, in the past five years, another trend has entered the urban agricultural scene: agrihoods, short for agricultural neighborhoods.

The Urban Land Institute defines agrihoods as master-planned housing communities with working farms as their focus. Overwhelmingly, they have large swaths of green space, orchards, hoop houses and greenhouses, and some with barns, outdoor community kitchens, and environmentally sustainable homes decked with solar panels and composting.

Within the city of Detroit, home to nearly 1,400 community gardens and farms, there is one officially designated agrihood, Michigan Urban Farming Initiative(MUFI). The nonprofit in the North End neighborhood, just north of the recently gentrified Midtown area, calls itself America’s First Sustainable Urban Agrihood.

The Michigan initiative is a 3-acre farm focusing on food insecurity in one of Detroit’s historic communities that was once home to a thriving Black middle class.

It was founded in 2012 and gained its development designation in 2016. Co-founder Tyson Gersh said at the time, “Over the last four years, we’ve grown from an urban garden that provides fresh produce for our residents to a diverse, agricultural campus that has helped sustain the neighborhood, attracted new residents and area investment.” They’ve received corporate support from Target, BASF, and General Motors.

The Detroit agrihood model plans to provide a Community Resource Center with educational programs and meeting space across from the garden, a café, and two commercial kitchens.

MUFI grows lots of hot peppers and collard greens,

because that is what North Enders like, Blunt says. But they’re also an economic opportunity. At MUFI, one of their sustainability goals is to create hot sauces from their fresh peppers to sell. The farm also has rows and rows of other vegetable varieties all dotted with marigolds, which help keep bugs away, organically.

Potential to Transform Abandonment in an Asset

Image credit: Motwon to Growtown: Detroit’s Urban Farming Revolution , https://www. earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/building-agricultural-neighborhoods-indetroit/

Collage by Author

Mexicantown: Flush-Curbs-Innovations for Inclusive Mobility

The City of Detroit is using $80 million in bond funding to improve neighborhood and commercial corridors across the city to help show that the city’s redevelopment isn’t just limited to downtown. The projects include adding bike lanes and pedestrian walkways, as well as plants and new signage32

In Mexicantown in Southwest Detroit, the main drag recently got a $5.4-million facelift that uses a curbless design, with dark bricks serving as a parking lane and light bricks forming wider sidewalks. The result is a wide-open feel that makes the restaurant and shopping hub feel more like a plaza31.

Image credit: CURBED Detroit - https://detroit.curbed.com/2020/1/16/21068713/ bagley-street-mexicantown-detroit-shared-street

Building Better neighbourhoods

Historically, streets in Western city centers have always been inherently shared areas. Different road users were only divided into discrete zones in the 1950s, when private automobiles began to dominate the roadway, and pedestrians were relegated to small, limited sidewalks33.

The living street, or woonerf model, originated as a movement in Delft, The Netherlands, in the late 1960s in response to the dominance of vehicles affecting the city’s historic cityscape. This typology, pioneered by Joost Vahl, a Dutch engineer, was approved by the Dutch government in 1976 as a new residential street style34.

The fundamental goal of living streets is to create streets that are shared communal spaces that can be utilized for a number of purposes, not just as a vehicle thoroughfare, but also as a residential garden that can be used by walkers, cyclists, and automobiles35

The Woonerf’s successful integration of vehicles and people spaces to create a street that is accessible by all serves as a great real-world precedent to understanding the dynamics of building safer, and better car-mixed spaces for an autonomous, clean energy future.

Living Streets

On-street Parking Arrangement as Traffic Calming Tool

Irregular arrangement of parked vehicles forces drivers to drive more cautiously through the streets

Narrow, Meandering Streets Narrow, meandering streets force drivers to exercise more caution when driving through these streets, and deter most drivers from passing through unnecessarily

Woonerf: Living Streets

Hierarchy of Realms Efficient Use of Space Increase Socialization Create Active Streets Increase Level of Safety

Speed Limit: 10 km/h

Low speed limit ensures comfort of all users in the street

Flush Curbs

A singular paved surface establishes a common shared street between alll users, with only change in tiling patterns to demarcate certain parking zones

Outdoor Street Furniture + Play Spaces

Residents are free to put out street furniture and features to create their own extended “living room”, creating a “living Street” for their neighbours and themselves

Streets streets will more through most through it

On-Street Bicycle Parking

In the Netherlands, road priority is given to pedestrians and cyclists. Thus, space and infrastructure for cyclists is provided on the streets.

Landscaping Planters, trees, shrubbery are placed around the street to calm traffic, as well as to provide shade and a greener environment for a livable street

Diagram by Author Model based-off of Hennepstraat, a Woonerf in Utrecht, Netherlands

Density is Destiny

Solutions to Saving Detroit

A thick, populated urban texture of people connecting with one another on a daily basis is the very quality that defines urban life. Its absence is the essence of Detroit’s predicament37.

Detroit has to employ a form of triage that could imperil the political future of even the boldest elected officials: a choice to abandon failed neighborhoods so stillfunctioning neighborhoods can thrive. The potential of just that kind of strategy has already been demonstrated on the city’s southwest side in Mexicantown, a workingclass neighborhood with a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly retail district, hardly any abandoned homes and a recent history of well-deployed government grants secured by local politicians and then productively exploited by local businesspeople37

Connecting Clusters

Nothing starves a neighborhood like isolation36 In Detroit, vital neighborhoods are not contiguous, but scattered across the map. However, the city’s main thoroughfares-a series of eight- and 10-lane radial avenues that expand radially from downtown, originally laid out two centuries ago are a virtual stencil for a transportation system that could link scattered communities into a coherent whole.

The Gift of Nature

The random expanse of vacant lots in Detroit can be assembled into something far more authentic and useful. Noted landscape and urban designer Diana Balmori believes cities can “transform abandonment into an asset” by allowing forsaken neighborhoods to revert to their natural state. This ties in with the agri-hood movement in Detroit, where an urban-rural hinterland condition is happening37

“Now Detroit has to change in ways that contradict the expansive vision it was built on. In a word, Detroit has to shrink. It needs to become smaller, greener, thriftier. (Detroit recently learned this lesson about cars as well.) The city has to abandon those overgrown parts of itself that are hopelessly blighted and refocus its resources on those parts that can be saved. And it has to do it in the face of resistance both political and personal. Whether Detroit can pull this off will determine whether it survives.”39

Economic Sunrise

Every infrastructure program is also a jobs program. Every piece of ensuing development, like the midtown project, creates yet more employment. And every new business, every new resident, every new building or rehabbed factory adds to the tax base. When things start looking up, possibility itself can be a fuel for economic growth. Could the implementation of an Autonomous Architectural development influenced by the usage of Electric, autonomous cars be the driver for this growth?

Conclusion

Thus this thesis projects a redensified center for Detroit, where the automated vehicle is the impetus for redensification - instead of the key factor in sprawl.

360 sqkm land area

Fallen to 40% of population since its peak36

50 years ago

Today

5000 Officers 3000 Officers

<3 mile crime scene radius

>7.5 mile crime scene radius

Difficult to implement municipal services

Fire Department, trash collection, road maintenance, street lighting etc

Nakagin Capsule Tower Under construction, Image credit: https://sabukaru.online/articles/the-promised-tokyo

04

Autonomous Architecture

Metabolic Systems

Metabolism

The main idea was to rethink society using architecture as a tool for potential change, speculating how buildings can change, grow, and evolve, literally.

The word metabolism describes the process of maintaining living cells.

Metabolist architects and designers believed that cities and buildings are not static entities, but are everchanging—organic with a "metabolism." Buildings that could behave as cells - or grow as vegetation - were indispensable factors for metabolist plans.

Metabolically designed architecture is built around a spine-like infrastructure with prefabricated, replaceable cell-like parts—easily attached and readily removable when their lifespan is over.

From a biological point of view, the term explains chemical reactions occurring in a living body, how cells adapt and move to sustain life. Metabolism is the law of growing and living things. But also, the original Japanese version of the word, shinchintaisha, overtones a spiritual perspective, closest to the Buddhist concept of impermanence, the meaning of renewal, replacement, and regeneration40

I see this thesis as a reimagining of the scale, automation and resilience of the visions of the Metabolists - To articulate this vision, projects and concepts from the Metabolist movement will be reviewed.

Image credit: Kiyonori Kikutake’s sketches, https://sabukaru. online/articles/the-promised-tokyo

Literature Review: Investigations in Collective Form - Fumihiko Maki

Form Examples

Group Form

Collective

Form

Combined/mixed models to concieve large complex forms

Fumihiko Maki proposed the use of megastructures to provide the city with an overall coherence. He proposed a loose, indeterminate approach to urban design through the use of nodal points, in which the architect would design megastructures or public agorae at strategic ‘focal points,’ and new urban districts would develop around them through the ‘open linkages,’ rather than drawing a fixed, teleological ‘master plan’ for the city/neighbourhood37

Maki posits that the urban society is characterized by: (1) coexistence and conflict of amazingly heterogeneous institutions and individuals;

Compositional Form

Mega Form

(2) unprecedented rapid and extensive transformations in the physical structure of the society;

(3) rapid communications methods

(4) technological progress and its impact upon regional cultures.

As a result, the urban society is seen as a dynamic field of interrelated forces, a set of mutually independent variables in a rapidly expanding infinite series.

However, Cities today are monotonous patterns of static elements. They lack visual and physical character consonant with the functions and technology which

Planned Cities such as Chandigarh or Brasilia

Agricultural City or Tokyo Bay Development

Stepped Villages of Greek Islands or Dogon villages

Approach

Sequential (Dynamic)

Hierarchical (Static)

Compositional (Static)

Structural Open-Ended (Dynamic) Ideal System

compose them, as well as elasticity and flexibility.

This situation has prompted the investigation with the nature of “Collective Form.” Collective form represents groups of buildings and quasi-buildings, that have reasons to be together.

In the case for megastructures, Maki wrote that the ideal is a kind of master form which can move into ever new states of equilibrium and yet maintain visual consistency and a sense of continuing order in the long run. This suggests that the megastructure which is composed of several independent systems that

can expand or contract with the least disturbance to others would be more preferable to the one of a rigid hierarchical system.

Maki’s Collective Form ideals that encompasses concepts of discrete, sequential developments linked through certain compositional and structural hierarchies in an open-ended, dynamic system relate back to the idea of implementing some sort of mobile, metabolic system to reimagine a future for Detroit.

Overall Diagram by Author, Image credit: Maki 2008, p.46

4.2 Autonomous Architecture: Metabolism Precedents

Nakagin Capsule Tower Kisho Kurakawa Ginza, Tokyo 1972

Interchangeable Modules connected to central concrete core

Pre-manufactured modules, transported to site by truck and hoisted by crane

Image Credits: Nakagin Capsule Tower: Living In A Long Forgotten Future - https://worldarchitecture. org/architecture-news/cgegv/nakagin_capsule_tower_living_in_a_long_forgotten_future.html

140 capsules, 14 storeys tall

Pre-assembled Interior

Built-In Bathroom 3.8m

Each unit is attached to the concrete core with only four high-tension bolts, allowing the units to be replaced.

Built-In Storage and amenities

2.1m 2.3m

TV, Radio, Alarm Clock, Telephone Built-In Bed

The module was designed to accommodate traveling businesspeople who worked in downtown Tokyo throughout the week. It is a model for sustainable and recyclable design, as each module can be connected into the central core and replaced or exchanged as needed. By connecting the capsule to other capsules, the internal space of each module may be modified42

This unusual perspective on Tokyo flats and high-rises is a classic example of Kisho Kurakawa’s Metabolism architectural style, which emphasizes adaptable, expanding, and interchangeable building forms36.

Hidaka once stated that the Metabolist ideas of the 1960s “were very new, they saw cities as ‘moving’ and dynamic. Metabolism wanted to collaborate with engineers, they invited scientists, designers, and industrial designers. They wanted transcultural collaborations. It’s still relevant because of the ‘dynamic city’ and trans-cultural aspects36.”

Kurakawa’s Metabolist concepts of dynamicism, expansion, adaptability and “moving cities” are kay components that I would like to explore in my proposal for a new living typology in Detroit.

Image Credits: https://archeyes.com/nakagin-capsule-tower-kisho-kurokawa/

Autonomous Architecture: Metabolism Precedents

The City in the Air Arata Isozaki Shinjunku, Japan 1962

Capsules suspended in air over cylindrical and modular megastructures

Foundations resembled enormous craters left by bombs-reference to clouds of smokeraised during the bombardment by USA during WWII

Image Credits: Arata Isozaki and Associates

“Tokyo is hopeless…I am leaving everything below 30 meters to others. If they think they can unravel the mess in this city, let them try. I will think about architecture and the city above 30 meters. An empty lot of 10 square meters is all I need on the ground. I will erect a column there, and that column will be both a structural column and a channel for vertical circulation.”

-Arata Isozaki, in response to Tokyo’s construction height limit of 31 meters43

City in the Air permits the expansion and the reorganization of the urban space, incorporating or removing units of capsules in order to satisfy real time necessities of the residents.

For Arata Isozaki, the city is destined to be destroyed. A ruin is the future of our city and the future is the ruin itself. In Incubation Process, he says: “Future cities are themselves ruins. Our contemporary cities…are destined to live only a fleeting moment. Give up their energy and return to inert material. All of our proposals will be buried. And once again the incubation

mechanism is reconstituted. That will be our Future” The project is a declaration of architectural principles: flexible, mobile and capable to satisfy the constant necessities and requirements of its users.

Similar to the Nakagin Capsule tower, The City in the Air’s themes of building on ruins, flexibility and mobility are central to the idea of proposing a new form of living in Detroit, a post-industrial wasteland that has been ruined by cars.

Autonomous Architecture: Future Cities Precedents

Plug-In City Archigram, Peter Cook Kent, London 1963-1966

Pre-fab “capsules”

Image Credits: Archigram http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/

Access systems, diagonal lifts, and the servicing elements to bring up food and water, take out rubbish etc.

The Plug-In City project seeked to redefine prefabrication as a romantic and exciting concept. It “allowed people to grow their dwelling with themselves”. The main idea was to erect a megastructure that contains circulation and service systems. A substructure is then added, that can carry dwelling units.

Plug-In City was a method of allowing people to grow their dwelling with themselves. The replaceable capsules that vary in size creates a lot of variety and change. The construction industry would do the construction, and planning would be done by the

Plug-In City concept allowed people to customise and easily replace their pre-fabricated capsule homes

occupants of the house. As well as hosting private homes, Plug-in City envisaged the megastructures featuring a host of elevated public spaces. Archigram was moving away from a 2-dimensional approach to city planning- looking at an alternative way of putting a city together, where it would be possible to have open spaces at upper levels.

Plug-In City’s ideas of automation, radical adaptibility and elevated public spaces ties in closely to ideas of density in Detroit, as well as incorporating “living streets” concepts.

“So it lifts the city off the ground and it enjoys space in a different way, because there are certain pieces of enclosed space that then become public areas. The megastructure that you hold the dwellings on can start to sprout up and become relatively high-rise and contain more public open spaces inside it.” -Peter Cook44

Metabolism De-Densification

Can the advancements in mobility and automation create megastructuralist principles, strategically densifying and de-densifying negative

De-Densification

E-Mobility

create a new form of metabolism? One that moves away from de-densifying the post-industrial city to create a mobile, carbonnegative city?

05 Motown Modified

Mapping the Motor-city

Industrial plots Unoccupied plots Parks Water body Motown Mobility

Schematic Strategy

Proposed Scheme (Macro)

Schematic Strategy

Proposed Site (Meso)

Proposed Site

The proposal site is located .... The site features a good balance of districts/developments that characterises Detroit’s Post-Industrial landscape today- mix of Blighted neighbourhoods, Indusrial regions, highways and Residential District undergoing revitalisation works. This map of the site is almost like a Cornell box of Detroit’s urban situation, which is why this thesis hopes to tackle this area.

Blighted Neighbourhood

Industrial Belt

Residential District Highways

Proposed Scheme

The thesis proposal can possibly implement an incremental, phased approach to developing this new typology of living, gradually densifying neighbourhoods and clearing land for agricultural purposes.

This was inspired by Metabolist and Archigram concepts of dynamic, cellular growth and moving systems, where the development is not a rigid, hierarchical system but rather an open-ended scheme.

Methodology and Research Conclusion

This speculative proposal intends to relocate and densify entire blighted neighbourhoods of the city, not as a direct copy, but by recomposition through the lens of an autonomous future. A future where clean energy, autonomous cars change the hierarchy of spaces between cars and humans, as well as the redefinition of space and transport- can my room be my car? and vice versa. If spaces can now autonomously move as well, how would that redefine mobility and neighbourhoods in Detroit?

The research has been grounded on past and present developments in Detroit and the AV industry, before taking a step further to speculate what more can autonomous mobility bring to a city and its architecture. Recent movements like the rise of Agri-hoods in Detroit has been taken into account as well, through densification strategies to free up more land area.

It also explores both real-life and “paper” architectural strategies, from Woonerf typologies that have successfully integrated car and people spaces, to radical concepts of the Metabolist movement and Archigram-that plays with ideas of dynamic cities and spaces, organic growth and adaptability, which are themes pertinent to a city like Detroit that has undergone drastic change over the past 50 years.

Admittedly, architecture itself may not be able to completely tackle all of Detroit’s complex issues, and make a change as big as reversing the sprawl-such radical transformations require help and forces beyond the realm of architecture to do so.

As much as the car has caused the downfall of Detroit, this thesis seeks to play on this romantic vision: where instead of reinforcing old trends, maybe the advent of clean energy, autonomous cars can create a vision for a better way of integrating cars in the American City, playing a role in reversing this trend, and influence the way new technologies are used in cities.

PAST

FUTURE

CARS CARS

Image credit: Lester Graham/Michigan Radio https://www.michiganradio.org/post/crime-detroit-neighborhoods-blight-and-illegal-dumping Floto+Warner https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/waymo-fleet-self-driving-cars-ready-primetime-180970713/

DOWNFALL

Arthur Radebaugh

Themes

RetroFuturism

With the talk and research of all these advanced technologies, it is hard not to be reminded of sci-fi visions and speculations of the future- where designers, artists and filmmakers from the past were inspired by industrial and technlogical advancements to set their imaginations wild- on what the future might be. Retrofuturism draws on past optimism of the future, with often imaginative and whimsical proposals.

We are living in that future, and in the next decade, or even 5 years we may experience a far greater revolution in the way we live and travel- just like how the pandemic has drastically changed the way majority of the population work, from physically in the office to remotely, opening up many more opportunities for people around the world and forcing us to rethink our work/living spaces.

Similarly, the advent of electric and autonomous vehicles are already making their way into the market, and it is never too early to imagine what changes this may bring in our built environment.

“Closer Than We Think!”, a cartoon showing futuristic situations that ran in more than 200 newspapers from 1958 to 1963, was Arthur Radebaugh’s finest futuristic work. These strips represent mid-20th century futurism at its best. From Robot Driving to One-World job market, Radebaugh’s visions of the future have strongly influenced The Jetsons and many of his predictions have been realised in one way or another since the strip first appeared in the newspapers.

Furthermore, this retrofuturist artist was based in Detroit, so many of these artworks have had a clear influence from the Motor-city culture of the 50s and 60s.

This thesis seeks to play on similar themes to produce an almost whimsical take on how this future of automated mobility might look like.

Image Credits: Arthur Radebaugh

07 Bibliography

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