Hasta La Ideas

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pemAbout-Face by Rosalyne Shieh and Weatherizing by Catie Newell./em/p

pIt’s no secret that houses can be acquired for cheap in Detroitmdash;as low as $500 if you attend the a href=”http://www.waynecounty.com/wcauctions/”Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction/a. With property so easy to acquire, a new question surfaces: what should be done with them? Many are dilapidated from disuse, burnt-out with no plumbing or electrical wiring to speak of, despite being located in partially occupied neighborhoods. Prior ‘cheap-house’ projects have made a href=”http://icehousedetroit.blogspot.com/” polemical, visual statements/a that A href=”http://www.thedetroiter.com/b2evoArt/blogs/index.php?blog=2title=why_art_3_paint_the_town_orangemore=1c=1tb=1pb=1″call out/a the urban blight in Detroit. a href=”http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/architecture/faculty/fellowships/5fellows/abrons/”Five teaching/research fellows from the University of Michigan’s Architecture Department/a have approached their $500 house a little differently, using it as a testing ground for their ideas about architecture and domestic space. /p

pThe house was purchased at the above-mentioned Wayne County Auction, and is located near Hamtramck, in the same neighborhood that community-focused Design99 built their recently blogged a href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/design99s_neighborhood_machine__16658.asp”Neighborhood Machine/a. Over the past year, Ellie Abrons, Meredith Miller, Thomas Moran, Catie Newell, and Rosalyne Shieh have been rehabilitating the property, rewiring it for electricity and investing in new windows, for example. At the same time, they’ve tested their own ideas about new ways to experience and occupy this house, building them right into the existing architecture, reflected in the title of the project: emFive Fellows: Full Scale./em Now that their fellowships are over and the project is complete, the deed has been turned over to Design99 for further development and use./p

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pemThom Moran’s Table and Chairs staircase./em/p

pAbove, see Thom Moran’s emTable and Chairs/em, built to give the house a new staircase (in addition to the old one in the bathroom). It’s room-like in scale, and its steps double as seating surfaces and shelving. The direct making technique suggests that there are interesting building opportunities even with basic tools and skills./p

blockquoteThis project intends to provide the house with its missing staircase. The bleacher-like quality of the stair makes it a space to move through but also a place to linger. Something between a shelf and a ladder, the form of the stair can serve as permanent home for plants or a temporary place for a book or a drink. The stair is designed to be realized with minimal means. Not the “capital M” minimalism of art history, but the more immediate minimalism of survivalists, home depot and the typical apartment dweller’s toolbox. Inspired by Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione (roughly translated, it means “self-made” or “self-designed”), the stair is constructed with only cheap 1×2 boards and nails. It is something anyone can make with a saw, hammer and nails. This frankness and simplicity in making, initially a response to the lack of infrastructure (like electricity) in many Detroit homes, is more about practicality than polemics. Rather than offering a critique of contemporary techniques of making, the “lo-fi” quality of this project explores the opportunities of the primitive as an optimistic act./blockquotea href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/one_500_dollar_house_five_architectural_experiments__16683.asp”(more…)/a
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