rogueHAA is pleased to announce the next event in its 2011-2012 panel discussion series: Provocations: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse

PANEL DISCUSSION 05: “archiCRITICAL: Evolving Detroit’s Architectural Criticism”
January 26, 2012 – Panel Discussion: 6pm-8pm, Reception to follow: 8pm-9pm
Tech Two (formerly known as Dalgleish Cadillac)
6160 Cass Ave, Detroit

Architectural criticism is a productive and creative literary practice, challenging the architectural profession to consciously examine itself while simultaneously guiding its evolution. Bound in a mutually constructive association, architecture and architectural criticism contribute to each other in reactive and proactive ways.

But what is the function of architectural criticism (and architecture) for societies consumed with economic, social, and environmental crises, which may or may not be directly related to the built environment?  Should architecture (and architectural criticism) focus solely on the built environment, or more actively engage the societies that inhabit and/or fund them?  How does architectural criticism react to a practice (and public) shifting from a desire for superstarchitecture towards socially conscious, equitable design?  Can this symbiotic relationship be more productive towards this end goal?

archiCRITICAL brings together six distinguished architectural critics to expound upon these difficult questions.

Participants:
Frank X. Arvan – President, AIA Detroit
Jennifer Conlin – Contributor, New York Times
Sarah F. Cox – Editor, Curbed Detroit
Michael Hodges – Fine Arts Columnist, Detroit News
Karrie Jacobs – Writer, Architectural Critic, and Editor, Design Observer and Metropolis Magazine
Reed Kroloff – Director, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum
Melissa Dittmer – Event Moderator, rogueHAA

Following the panel discussion we will post a video and written summary of the event.  We will also provide an open comment board for others to share their thoughts on the dialogue.  As always, this event is open and free to the public.

rogueHAA would like to formally thank TechTown for their contributions towards this event.  More imformation on TechTown can be found on their website, http://techtownwsu.org/.

This new MONU issue on the topic of Post-Ideological Urbanism probably touches on one of the most fascinating and biggest issues of our time and in our culture, or what is left of it: the non-ideological – or better post-ideological – conditions of our society when it comes to cities. Today, ideology ap…pears to have become, and to have been reduced to, something merely aesthetic, something you can buy yourself into as Wouter Vanstiphout explains in an interview with us entitled “Acrobatic Narratives”. In that sense cities have become suspicious territories where hypocrisy and fakery prevail when it comes to urban ideologies…and a new sincerity is obviously needed in a world consisting of a multiplicity of choices and urban outcomes without a single consistent urban ideology as Melissa Dittmer, Jamie Witherspoon, and Noah Resnick point out in their piece “Choose Your Own Urbanism Presents: The Case of the Missing Ideal”.

The following text is an excerpt from an article entitled “CHOOSE YOUR OWN URBANISM PRESENTS: The Case of the Missing Ideal” that has been recently published in the latest MONU magazine:

It’s a hot, dry and dusty afternoon… But, then again, all the afternoons are hot, dry and dusty in Sin City.  You’re in your shoebox of an office with the top three buttons of your white cotton shirt undone, a damp towel on the back of your neck, and the sound of a rickety two-dollar fan blowing in your face.  The A.C. is on the fritz again, and you’re just about to phone up that good-for-nothing building super to complain, when you hear three soft taps on the glass pane of your office door – the one that reads: Calvin Lynch, Private Detective.

You ask her to have a seat in the worn leather armchair and offer her a cigarette and a glass of flat ginger ale.  She accepts neither and says she prefers to stand. 

“I’m searching for something,” she finally says, after standing in front of the window, staring out through the half-closed blinds. “They say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but this thing didn’t stay.  Or, maybe it never existed to begin with. Either way, I need your help.”

And then she says the magic words that for the first time since she walked through the door, piqued your interest: “I’m willing to pay you whatever you need to find it.”  You button your top three buttons, walk over to the window to open the blinds, and sit on the corner of your desk directly across from the slightly agitated but determined young woman looking you keenly in the eyes.

“If you’re ready to start now” she says “I’ve got a car downstairs waiting to drive us to the City Planning department.”  You ask her just what it is she thinks you can help her find, and she replies in a subdued, but urgent tone: “Las Vegas’ urban ideology.”

 If you grab your fedora and your decommissioned, but trusty police revolver, and hop into her waiting car to search for the guiding principles that shaped the city’s morpholgy: turn to page 69

 If you pull another cigarette from your crumpled pack, and explain to her that Vegas rejected urban ideology from the start, in favor of the capitalist gamble: turn to page 666

Las Vegas has perpetually been a city of conflicted narratives. From the dry desert ecosystem to the seedy commercial enterprise to the themed mega-resort to the recent trend of chic high-rise hotels and condominiums, the city is a collection of contradictions. Each identity exists as a totalizing world, literally and conceptually distinct from one another, yet occupying and often denying the same physical space. While these narratives sometimes overlap, there is the tendency for each to maintain its own independence. Las Vegas is built on storytelling. The city is as much about the stories it enables as the buildings, population, and hidden infrastructure that support it. It is a place where one goes to escape the weight of normative urban structure in favor of the whimsy, adventure, and multiplicity of urban outcomes without a single consistent urban ideology.

Architecturally, the image of Las Vegas is always referential. Drawing on the cultural exoticism of places like Paris, Venice, Egypt, or even ancient and Medieval Europe, the built environment of the downtown does not so much imitate but rather capitalizes on our hidden desires for these exotic encounters. This desire is not for the actual experience of visiting these places, but for the unique eclecticism and historic ideologies that each of these referential cities offer, all within the safety and comfort of the United States. The city itself is constructed like a “choose-your-own-adventure”, or interactive fiction storybook, where one’s experience is finely orchestrated by the various choices one makes as they flip non-sequentially through the pages.

To read one of these young-adult detective noir novels in numerical page order, rather than the non-sequential path, would yield a disjointed presentation of the text and result in an incomprehensible narrative. In an analogous way, a geographically linear excursion from any two locations on opposite sides of the Vegas Strip will provide a similarly incoherent urban phenomenon, in sharp contrast to the highly controlled encounters of the establishments that line the Strip itself.

A study of Las Vegas suggests that in a city with no overarching ideological framework, each inhabitant is given the opportunity to choose their own.  This choice, however, is made from a highly curated menu of theatrical pastiche and capitalistic excess. The urban environment is designed to lead visitors through a multiplicity of destinations, via a selection of predetermined pathways, rather than provide a sequential unfolding of city fabric. 

For a full version of the article, click here.

This article was co-authored and designed by Melissa Dittmer, Jamie Witherspoon, and Noah Resnick.

rogueHAA is pleased to announce the next event in its 2011-2012 panel discussion series: Provocations: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse

PANEL DISCUSSION 04: “INCENTIVES – Funding Advocacy”
November 15, 2011 – Panel Discussion: 6pm-8pm, reception to follow
Cass City Cinema at The Burton Theatre
3420 Cass Avenue

Detroit’s deep history  of commercial innovation and industrial production has created innumerable stories of prosperity and devastation.  From this spectrum of aspiration and consequence has emerged a fertile environment that gives root to new creativity and opportunity, while establishing a remarkable legacy of philanthropic and institutional support. This environment has created a sophisticated network of resources, where large scale national foundations, anchor institutions, and influential local leaders work alongside small scale arts groups, community development coalitions, entrepreneurs, and development advocates to cultivate locally focused programs. 

In the space of this network, numerous projects are underway, and many more are yet to come.  Our discussion will catalogue these efforts, discuss their impact, and outline new and innovative strategies for grants, incentives and other programs in the future. 

Participants:
Melinda Anderson – Detroit Creative Corridor Center
Heather Carmona – Woodward Avenue Action Association
George Jacobsen – Kresge Foundation
Rishi Jaitly – Knight Foundation
Sue Mosey – Midtown Detroit Inc
Dan Kinkead – Event Moderator, HAA

Following the panel discussion we will post a video and written summary of the event.  We will also provide an open comment board for others to share their thoughts on the dialogue.  As always, this event is open and free to the public.

Dich2otomy from HAA on Vimeo.

As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA has installed “Dich2otomy” an architectural installation inside Lafayette Greens Urban Garden. It will be open during the remainder of the Detroit Design Festival.

“Waters are spring and origin, the reservoir of all the possibilities of existence; they precede every form and support every creation.”-Mircea Eliade

Waters in their various states are imbued with deep symbolic significance as well as cultural, economic and physical necessity. In whatever form or context, waters invariably retain their greatest natural function; they disintegrate, abolish forms; they are at once purifying and regenerating. This installation seeks to position itself at the center of this tenuous duality of city and nature by celebrating the intricate and ever-changing relationship between the two. The constructed threshold provides a lens through which both historic city and natural environment are simultaneously reflected and distorted, challenging the viewer to engage with these changing layers of complexity.

more imagery

Artist X. As part of this blog’s ongoing mission to raise the level of design discourse, rogueHAA has created a new series of posts entitled, “Artist X”.  This series will highlight local artists, showcasing unique and innovative projects found within the city.  By presenting multiple creative disciplines, we hope to build community relationships, spark Detroit specific design dialogue, encourage multi-disciplinary collaboration, and ultimately, strengthen the existing Detroit creative class.

Noah Stephens – In April 2010,  Noah saw a Dateline NBC program that implied conditions in Detroit were so dire that wild raccoon meat had become a staple food. That month, He started The People of Detroit photodocumentary as a counterbalance to sensationalized media portrayals of Detroit. Eight months after starting the project (and only 2 years after buying his first camera), a creative director in Shanghai saw the photo project and hired him to shoot an ad campaign for McDonald’s China. Noah has  been doing photography and writing full-time ever since.

Describe your work in three sentences.

TPOD is a portraiture project focused on people who live, work, or otherwise have a significant impact on the city of Detroit. I write an essay to go along with every portrait. The essay introduces you to the person in the photograph and often times serves as an entry point to broader discussions about life in the city and social issues in general.

How do you collaborate with other Detroit artists?

I’m a self-taught photographer. Everything I know about photography, I’ve learned from other photographers – mostly through the internet. I don’t often collaborate with other artist in the production of TPOD, however, since I’ve learned so much from others, I feel obliged to share what I know with other artists whenever they seek my advice.

What other creative disciplines would you like to work with in the future?

I’ve always had an interest in multimedia abstract painting.

Why Detroit?  Has the city (people, place, economy, etc) influenced your work? Please give at least one specific example.

When I was 6-years-old, a 1st grade classmate took a bag of potato chips, crushed them between his palms, presented the potato shards to me, closed his eyes, swayed from side-to-side and sung repeatedly:

“I got moooooooreeee! I got moooooooreeee…”

I remember reaching out to steady him by his shoulders and – and when his eyes opened – I said

“You don’t have more. They’re just in smaller pieces…”

He swung at me.

I’ve always had an irrepressible drive to correct statements that are factually errant. When I saw the Dateline NBC special that cast Detroit as a city full of people scavenging for raccoon meat, I was compelled to right an ongoing meme about Detroit that was not wholly accurate. The only reason why I was compelled to do so, is because Detroit is so consistently disparaged in national and international media.  If I lived in a less often disparaged city, would not have started TPOD. So, Detroit is the entire reason for my art.

How can the artistic community help regenerate Detroit?

People email me from all over the world about TPOD. Some compliment me on the images. Some ask for technical advice about gear or post-processing techniques. Others tell me that they have never been to Detroit before and viewing TPOD has made them want to pay it a visit.

Art has the unique ability to influence how we feel on an emotional, visceral level. Art that is focused on Detroit is no different.

Art in Detroit can regenerate Detroit by positively influencing how people think about the city. As people see the city as a vibrant place they will be compelled to move here, invest here, and plant their businesses here.

If you could design one thing for Detroit, what would that be?

I would commission artists to use abandoned and blank walls as building-high canvases for invigorating art. The impact would extend beyond simple aesthetic value. I believe adorning blank and abandoned structures with art will buoy the spirits of the citizens who inhabit those places improve how they think about their community, themselves, and their prospects for the future.

Its my understanding that there has not been a single crime on Heidelberg St. since Tyree Guyton started his installation there. Seems like a provocative argument for doing the same thing in other places, no?

Website:

http://thepeopleofdetroit.com

DICH{2}OTOMY: Architectural Installation – Opening Reception

September 23 | Lafayette Garden | 6-9pm

As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce, DICH{2}OTOMY, an interactive architectural installation set in the dynamic context of Detroit’s Lafayette Garden.  The piece is composed of an interactive field of clear columns filled with liquid which simultaneously reflect, frame, and distort one’s view of the surrounding environment. These ‘illuminated shadows’ multiply, overlap, and converge creating a vibrant and dynamic experience through which to re-imagine the city.  While the opening reception will be held on Friday, September 23^rd, the installation will remain in the Lafayette Garden until Wednesday, September 28^th.

As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce the third event in its 2011/2012 series: PROVOCATIONS: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse. This bi-monthly lecture series began in June and will continue through the end of 2012.  Each panel discussion will invite local, regional, and national figures to discuss what makes Detroit provocative.  Set in a variety of under-utilized, contested, and historically charged spaces throughout our city, each event seeks to challenge the participants through candid discourse and direct engagement of the built environment.  It is the aim of each panel discussion to explore new urban strategies that promote social equity and advocacy.  We believe good design (and good design discourse) is a proactive and critical act, toeing the line between conflict and resolution.  While each event exists for only a moment, the entire series will provide a lasting catalogue of constructive dialogue, informing Detroit’s shared creative consciousness.

Event 03 DEFIANCE : Disobedient Design.

“My agenda is a dislocation of architecture from the narrow confines of professionalism and its development within an expanded cultural field.” – Jonathon Hill’s essay An Other Architect

In Jonathon Hill’s essay, An Other Architect, he outlines a program for supporting the development of illegal architects: creatives that question and subvert the precedents, codes, and laws of professional architecture. An illegal architect may very well be licensed, but deliberately operates in the “luminal space” at the edge of traditional architectural activity, an interstitial creative practice where architecture can be made of anything, anywhere, anyhow, and by anyone.

The Detroit creative community exemplifies the edge of design. For our proposed panel discussion, we will discard the preconceived boundaries of professional creative practice to explore disobedient design. Where, at times, one must operate at the fringes of convention and law to initiate new perspectives on our cultural, socio-economic, and political condition. In cities such as Detroit, conventional means for generating change, reinvestment, and opportunity have had limited traction, and such subversive acts may arguably effect change faster than through standard capital investment or bureaucratic policy.

For this panel, we invited five designers who operate within the vague edge of illegal design activity. The panelist invitations are topically specific, and diverse, to garner multiple perspectives on the issues. In addition, our panelists’ motivations and interventions range in scale and scope. Whether exploring such strategies as tactical urbanism, ephemeral architecture, or urban pranksters… all perspectives will be valued.

Panel Discussion

September 27
6:00 – 8:00 pm
District VII
Detroit River Town District
2690 Wight St, Detroit

Reception to follow
8:00 – 9:00 pm

Participants presenting in the “DEFIANCE” panel discussion include:

• Steve Coy hygienic dress league | detroit projection project
• Mike Han street culture mash
• Erin Kelly lambert, rotherstien, & associates
  
• Justin Langlois research director | broken city lab
• Catie Newell principal | *alibi studio | taubman college
  
• Melissa Dittmer Event moderator/rogueHAA

You can also follow all of our events through our Facebook page.

This Friday, rogueHAA will join hundreds from around the world to celebrate Park(ing) Day, a one day event that highlights the need for more livable and vibrant public spaces in our cities.

During last year’s installtion, pavers and sod where placed on a parking spot at the corner of Gratiot and Woodward. Soon, there was a green patch of space, an unusual site especially when one is accustomed to see a car in its place inste…ad. Onlookers were curious. Drivers paused. Parking enforcement stopped, then questioned, and questioned some more, but finally drove off.

This was the idea — to get people to notice, ask questions, and interact. For those that stopped by, they got the message and left with a smile on their faces.

This year’s theme is Urban Beach. Our Woodward beach will be located between Gratio + Grand River. Take off your shoes, dip your toes in the water, and just relax for a moment. 

We will be grilling at the beach from noon until 2pm.  Join our facebook page and mention it at the beach…get a free hotdog. 

For more information on Parking Day: http://parkingday.org/

To view photos of last year’s installation: http://www.roguehaa.com/tag/parking-day/

For additional Detroit PARKing Day Events: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158018997616431

lecturesHAA is pleased to announce the second event in its 2011/2012 series: PROVOCATIONS: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse. This bi-monthly lecture series began in June and will continue through the end of 2012.  Each panel discussion will invite local, regional, and national figures to discuss what makes Detroit provocative.  Set in a variety of under-utilized, contested, and historically charged spaces throughout our city, each event seeks to challenge the participants through candid discourse and direct engagement of the built environment.  It is the aim of each panel discussion to explore new urban strategies that promote social equity and advocacy.  We believe good design (and good design discourse) is a proactive and critical act, toeing the line between conflict and resolution.  While each event exists for only a moment, the entire series will provide a lasting catalogue of constructive dialogue, informing Detroit’s shared creative consciousness.

­Event 02 MOTIVATIONS: Design Instigators. In today’s trying economic and political climate it is often difficult to continuously produce thoughtful, provocative, and engaging design. Particularly in Detroit, which can be an equally frustrating and rewarding design environment, it is easy to question one’s creative motives. Yet as challenges mount, we have an opportunity to redefine our personal and civic means and methods, to refocus on why these creative initiatives have an even more important role to play.

For this discussion we ask our panelists to give us their motives, their reasons, and their hidden agendas as a way to foreground what inspires them to do what they do. We will focus on process over product, looking at the ways design can incite change through multiple trajectories. These are individuals who have, in one way or another, become catalysts for productive change in their communities and their City. Ultimately, we hope to uncover what their collective motives say about Detroit, its unique challenges, and how the City serves as a critical motivator for substantive dialogue within the City and beyond.

What’s your motivation?

What are your Ulterior Motives?

Panel Discussion

August 16, 2011

6:30 – 8:30 pm

2:1 Gallery

1480 Gratiot Ave, Detroit

Reception to follow

8:30 – 9:00 pm

Participants presenting in the “MOTIVATIONS” panel discussion include:

• Milton S.F. Curry Associate Dean/Associate Professor of Architecture U of M Taubman College
• Kate Daughdrill Artist /Co-Founder of Detroit SOUP
• Gregory Holm Artist/Photographer/2:1 Gallery
• Claire Nelson Owner of Bureau of Urban Living
• Stephen Vogel Professor of Architecture University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture
• Jamie Witherspoon Event moderator/rogueHAA

You can also follow all events through our Facebook page.

Cass Park Spit & Shine. Join us for a morning of site improvements to Cass Park, including weeding, pruning, general maintenance, and furniture assemblage.  Learn about the history of Cass Park.  Stay for a special surprise appearance at the end of the work day.  Following the morning’s activities, lunch will be served to all volunteers.   If you are able to volunteer, please RSVP on the facebook event page or email cassparkdetroit@gmail.com.

Event Details are as follows:

Cass Park (2nd Ave & Temple)
Detroit, MI
Saturday, July 30 | 8am-1pm