The architectural imagination
Subtitle: United States Pavilion, Biennale Architettura 2016
By: Cynthia Davidson, editor
Contributors: Davidson, Cynthia C., editor
Series: cataLog -- 37, spring/summer 2016; Log (New York, N.Y. : 2003) -- no. 37.
Publisher: Anyone Corporation
Published: 2016
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
Subjects: Architecture; Visionary architecture
Description: The Architectural Imagination presents new speculative architecture projects designed for specific sites in Detroit but with far-reaching applications for cities around the world. As the home of the automobile industry, the free-span concrete factory, Motown, and techno, Detroit was once a locus of invention. In recent years it has loomed in the public consciousness as a city with a depleted population and an urban landscape pockmarked with blight. Today Detroit has emerged from bankruptcy, and there is a new urgency in the air to imagine and plan for the city’s possible futures, both in the downtown core and in its many neighborhoods. Believing in the potential of architecture to catalyze change, the curators selected 12 visionary American architectural practices to address these futures. The projects not only demonstrate the value of diversity of the architectural imagination but also have the potential to spark the collective imagination, thus launching new conversations about the importance of architecture in Detroit and cities everywhere.
Table of contents: title: The architectural imagination – An agenda for the everyday / Maurice Cox – The architectural imagination / Cynthia Davidson – Detroit and the acceleration of history / Robert Fishman – Figments of the architectural imagination / Todd Gannon – Architecture’s appearance and the practices of imagination / K. Michael Hays – Oh my aching antenna: The fall and rise of postmodern creativity / Sylvia Lavin – Funny, crazy, silly: Lyrics for the suspension of architectural disbelief / John McMorrough – United States pavilion courtyard, Biennale Architettura 2016 / Monica Ponce de Leon – My Detroit postcard photos / Postscript – Four Detroit sites – Mexicantown/Southwest Detroit – US Post Office – Dequindre Cut/Eastern Market – Packard Plant – Twelve speculative projects for Detroit – Promised land-air / A(n) Office – The next port of call / BairBalliet – Center for fulfillment, knowledge, and innovation / Greg Lynn FORM – Mexicantown: A liminal blur / Mack Scogin, Merril Elam Architects – Dequindre Civic Academy – A situation made from loose and overlapping social and architectural aggregates / MOS – The new Zocalo / Pita & Bloom – New Corktown / Present Future – Revolving Detroit / Preston Scott Cohen Inc. – Detroit Rock City: An urban geology / SAA/Stan Allen Architect – Detroit Reassembly Plant / T+E+A+M – A new federal project / Zago Architecture – Postcard / Camilo Jose Vergara, Hitsville USA, Motown Museum, Detroit, 2015.