reclaimingtheland

Oxford Brookes School of Architecture, Design Studio 3. 2015.

Building Must Die.

'We speak of buildings, although inanimate, as if they were ‘alive’. Structure is likened to bones, façade to skin, and windows to eyes, the physicality of architectural form takes its precedent in the anatomy of our own. Over time they change, develop, and get scarred. Their lives are finite. Buildings like bodies must die.

This brief has taken it’s title from a book with the same name by Stephen Cairns and Jane M. Jacobs. Buildings are born through the act of design, the architect is assumed to be their conceiver and creator. Asking what of the “death” of buildings? What of the decay, deterioration, and destruction to which they are inevitably subject? And what might such endings mean for architecture’s sense of self?

Turning our gaze onto Detroit, we investigate the death of buildings, by looking into the cracks and getting acquainted with the ruins of old and new, and the crusts and crumbling of concrete and society. Architectural orders are redefined as we abandon the vanity of idealised forms and we seek to expand the notion of the architect as a shape-shifter with the capacity to re-imagine the world.' - DS3, Oxford Brookes Architecture Year Book 2015.

Reclaiming the Land

Detroit had rises as a global automotive city. It is a heavily industrialised city since decades ago. Large corporative companies are the one who dominate the land and the resources and leaving the consequence of heavy developments to the people.

Areas like the southwest of Detroit has been rated as the most polluted area. The residents were declaring their area as the ‘Sacrifice Zone’ of Detroit due to the ignorant heavy industrial companies around them. The companies are the main causes of the unwanted scene in southwest Detroit.

The intention of the research project is to propose a way to live in this indecent area and to propose a symbiotic alternative for the people to take part in a different lifestyle in order to adapt to the unwanted conditions - at the same time it is defined as an alternative way to reject the upper society’s way of living, against the unsustainable American lifestyle.

Detroit Must Shrink to Grow

The research started based on the idea of shrinking. In year 2010, Detroit’s mayor Dave Bing had decided to strengthen Detroit’s viable neighborhoods and raze or recycle the rest of the city. He is planning to use 30% of its land for new industries, sprawling residential lots, public parks and urban farms. Bing’s strategy depart radically from the high-profile downtown project, fancy sports stadiums, casinos and new headquarters for companies like GM, Little Caesars Pizza and Compuware.

Dave Bing’s intention is to create new stable communities with a sustainable size that able to provide proper living needs without unwanted vacant lands that cause problems to the neighborhood. This thought had inspired the later research to search on the industrial belt for a viable neighborhood that suits tha research narrative - to create an alternative community with a possible symbiotic relationship between the unchangeable industrial context and the existing locals in Detroit.

9 proposed small cities from Dave Bing’s ‘shrinking strategy’. The strategy included the southwest Detroit River Rouge area.

Dissecting Detroit. Each layers represent the footprint of Detroit’s exsiting neighborhoods. The idea is to create layers of frames with different opacity to show the population density in each neighborhood.

The traveller in the film constantly wandering between the present and the past. He travels through the present Detroit yet the past memory still lingering in his mind, overlapping with present scene questioning what has Detroit become. He sees the ruins as a new canvas for living - a foundation where the past can be use as a source of living, preserving the collective memory as a whole while generating a future for the people.

'...how to form an alternative community that embraces a symbiotic relationship between the existing occupants and the nearby Marathon Oil Refinery Company in the razed Oakwood Heights neighborhood of southwest Detroit through architectural strategy?

Detroit southwest 48217 area has been rated as the most polluted area in consequence of the surrounding active heavy industrial plants. The major industrial companies are the one who benefit from the destruction of the environment. There is nothing much left for the existing residents other than a few job opportunities, the violated lands and the polluted air.

The ‘sacrficed residents’ were forced even further when the Marathon Oil Refinery Company proposed a buy-out program to claim the Oakwood Heights neighborhood and to raze the neighborhood to create their ‘green space’.

The research project will look into Oakwood Heights neigborhood to search for a possibility to create an alternative community on this soon-to-be razed neighborhood that able to adapt to the indecent environment of the area. As a salvation for the ‘sacrificed zone...’

Programs

The intention of the project is to propose a new community in the razed Oakwood Heights neighborhood. The community will provide a site for the people to generate their own basic living needs - shelters, food and fresh air. The project consists of basic living module, planting module, fishing module, and a main visitor hall.

Other facilities that will be included are the Seed Library and the artificial landscape. The landscape is the camp site for alternate living shelters and as a water harvesting platform.

The occupants will have to be trained and become part of the planting work force as a return to use the provided shelthers facilities.

It is proposed as a symbiotic alternative for the people to take part in a different lifestyle in order to adapt to the unwanted conditions - at the same time as an alternative way to reject the upper society’s way of living, an act to reclaim their razed neighborhood.

The Site

In 2010, Marathon Oil Refinery Company had started to spend 1.9 billiion to expand their refinery plant into the nearby land. In 2011, they’ve annouced the Oakwood Heights Buy-Out Program in order to claim the land beside their plants to create a ‘green buffer zone’. With an aproximate population of 1,200 in Oakwood Heights, the company planning to spend approximate $40,000 per house comparing with the market price of $16,000 per house. However in 2014, there’re still around 10% of the residents turned down Marathon’s offer. Some of them had turned down the offer and hope that the purchase program can be terminates.

Oakwood Heights is a relatively well-kept, orderly hood that borders the Rouge River. For the locals, the purchase program has been particularly insulting for many reasons. The buyout has been divided into two zones. Zone one had received the ‘offer’. By taking an offer it means getting six months to move. With vacancy comes crime, and zone two is positioned to suffer the brunt since they are basically a peninsula surrounded by the first zone.

The polution density along the River Rouge shown above is visualising the situation of the current Oakwood Heights - The Sacrificed Zone.

The point of interests along River Rouge are all able to accessed by water transport. There are opportunities to link the point of interests with the proposed Oakwood Heights facilities.