I started Challenge Detroit a little under a year ago, at the end of a long, hot, lonely summer. I was obsessed with cleaning up the dust and sand that blew into my apartment from the windows. I was working in birmingham, and nervously drive to-and-from work on Woodward, since the 75 made me nervous. I was […]
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Here is a Home: Vernacular residential architecture in Detroit. Analysis of case study homes based upon average housing stock in Detroit neighborhoods and recommended treatments for blighted homes.
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Vernacular architecture expresses the economic conditions, social influences, and values of a city or country. It is a written history, scratched on […]
For the next week, I’m working on a study and proposal to analyze vernacular architecture building forms in Detroit and prototype ideas on how to preserve those forms (without necessarily restoring the entire home). The following is a preview of an analysis of my first Case Study Structure, a duplex house in Hamtramck (above).
As the […]
I’m currently sitting in my apartment, where it is warm, humid and half-way packed up. It’s been exactly a year (plus a few days) since I moved in, and the weather is remarkably the same. I guess living in the midwest has turned me into some sort of weather obsessive, but after this winter, all […]
Next week we finish up our second-to-last challenge and slowly, the color is returning to Brush Park. The wind is still cold and strong, but more times than not, I get off my bike and feel warm. I still carry my gloves in my bag, but I haven’t had to use them in a few […]
I think I speak for all of Michigan, when I say that winter cannot end soon enough. My weather app says today it is a balmy 45 degrees, but I am still sitting next to the radiator, cold and drinking jasmine tea. I’ve resorted to refusing certain restaurants because they are too drafty (I’m looking […]
It’s been a quiet month in Detroit, where it hasn’t been above freezing in over a month (minus that one day we got to 36 degrees, but it felt like 80), seemingly a weekend cannot pass without fresh snow, and I have not bothered to bike to work or clean the salt stains out of […]
Today at work, I bound five copies of a construction job proposal while listening to Prince. In the middle of “I would die 4 U” (good to know the “U” in song titles has been around for a while), one of the Vice Presidents of Sachse Construction stopped by to chat with me. One of […]
In my office, people still give me weird looks when I come tramping in in the morning, cheeks red and swinging my bike helmet. “Are you really still biking to work?” they ask, rolling their eyes. I imagine they think I’m ridiculous, some stereotype of another millennial hipster, needing to be “different.” I even have […]
My incredible grandmother, an author, a librarian, and the most optimistic person I know, wrote the guidebook, Walking Portland about fifteen years ago. I remember when she wrote it, my mother and I accompanied her on her walks. I loved the Ramona books when I was a kid, and my grandma delighted me by taking […]