Brick + Beam Detroit is an organization that supports homeowners throughout the city of Detroit as they work on home rehab and repairs. For the past two months, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with the amazing ladies who started this organization – Emilie Evans, Amy Elliott-Bragg, and Victoria Olivier – as we explored how […]
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 months since beginning my journey with Challenge Detroit, and that we have only a little less than a month until we complete our final projects. But more on that next month, this time around I wanted to share a little bit about what I do the other […]
We just wrapped up our fifth and final challenge project, and with the year quickly coming to a close I’ve been reflecting on the lessons learned throughout the past nine months. For our challenge projects, we are asked to use the human-centered design thinking process as a framework. There are five stages to the process […]
I’ve lived in other major cities, including Chicago and London, and although the cost of living here in Detroit is much less than other major cities, going out can still add up. As summer rolls around and the weather is getting warmer I’m on the lookout for things to do that won’t break the bank […]
If you run a Google search of ruin porn, you’re almost guaranteed to find an image of Detroit. The Michigan Central Station, Packard Plant and photos of decaying housing stock are littered across the internet. As a preservationist, I find these images both hauntingly beautiful and deeply disturbing. Should we dismiss the great architectural heritage […]
When we throw around the word “art”, everyone has a different visual picture that comes up. For me, I tend to think of fine arts, things found at the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts) or MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit). The reality is that art exists all around us, in many forms, and not […]
One of my favorite things about living in Detroit is the food scene. I’ve lived in Chicago and London, but never really felt like I could truly experience all the amazing food those cities had to offer. Detroit’s food scene feels more accessible to me. I’m trying to pinpoint why that is, but it’s hard […]
It’s hard to believe that we wrapped up our second challenge this month. We worked with Forgotten Harvest, a nonprofit that is working to reduce food insecurity in the metro Detroit area by rescuing food surplus and distributing the surplus to agencies around Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties. The team that I was on focused […]
As the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
Well, if that’s true then I’ve made a lot of lemonade over the past couple of months. But rather than dwell on those “lemons”, I’d like to be even more cliché and reflect on the things I am thankful for as November draws to a […]
This past Friday we wrapped up our first challenge project with MACC Development, a community development corporation serving the 48214 zip code. MACC Development is in the process of renovating a building on Mack Avenue, which will be not only their office but also function as a community space. As a part of the effort to […]
