Armed with optimism for the future, architect Matthew Radune and photographer Gregory Holm have created an art installation designed to bring attention to the precarious state of Detroit’s infrastructure.

The Blueprint America series on PBS has been taking a look at what to do about the challenges of maintaining and modernizing infrastructure in the United States.

Loveland is the vision of Detroit artist Jerry Paffendorf, a project that explores the idea of collective ownership alongside notions of community and the use public space.

Two students from Wayne State University have created an outdoor art installation in Detroit to highlight the lack of affordable health care options in the city.

Detroit is in a very interesting state. It’s simultaneously decomposing, and evolving into a new city. The Sweet Juniper blog has documented some of the evolution of Detroit in a series of photos they call “Feral Houses”. The images show how the yearly summer plant growth overtakes the many abandoned structures around the city, seemingly reclaiming them for nature.
Sweet Juniper explains:
I’ve seen “feral” used to describe dogs, cats, even goats. But I have wondered if it couldn’t also be used to describe certain houses in Detroit. Abandoned houses are really no big deal here. Some estimate that there are as [...]

In Windsor, Ontario, ‘creative research group’ Broken City Lab uses art as a means to “tactically disrupt and engage the city, its communities, and its infrastructures to reimagine the potential for action in the collapsing post-industrial city.”
Located just across the river from Detroit, Windsor shares a similar economic plight to that of its U.S. neighbor, mainly its reliance on automotive manufacturing as a primary source of revenue (Windsor is home to one of Chrysler’s Minivan plants, among others).
And just as groups like Detroit Unreal Estate Agency seek to shed light on the urban landscape that has slipped off the [...]

“In its apparently catastrophic form… Detroit has recently emerged as a figure for abject urban failure,” writes Andrew Herscher of Detroit Unreal Estate Agency. Herscher, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan, and collaborators Mirielle Roddier, Femke Lutgerink, and Partizan Publik’s Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat, are attempting to redefine the term economy with regard to Detroit’s post-industrial blight.
Herscher and his collaborators define ‘unreal estate’ as “urban space that has slipped through the literal economy, the economy of the market, and entered other economies, included but not limited to those of survival, invention, play and desire.”
In other [...]

Perhaps no place exemplifies the failures of a post-industrialized economy better than Detroit, a city that has lost more than half of its population over the past 60 years. In an effort to provide perspective on the dramatic changes taking place in his hometown, photographer Kevin Bauman began capturing images of the abandoned buildings that increasingly dotted the landscape. The resulting project titled 100 Abandoned Houses, paints a compelling portrait of a dying city where stately homes that were once vibrant and alive, are now bleak and boarded. The effect is equal parts beautiful and tragic, pointing to the challenges that lie ahead as [...]

Is Detroit the next Berlin? For the past several years, artists, musicians and others seeking time and space to work, and an inexpensive place to live have flocked to the German city. Now it seems that Detriot may be headed towards a similar influx of like-minded people.
Detroit has been in economic decline for some time now, and the current recession has made things even worse – or into an opportunity, depending how you look at it. At this point in Detriot, you can purchase a house for as low as $100. Urban pioneers are beginning to move in to take [...]

We’ve begun to assemble a photo gallery from the show. There are 300+ images currently and we’ve got a few more to add. At this point, the slide show is a nice virtual walk through Cobo Hall.
For this last post about the show, we’d like to spotlight Volkswagen’s stand design and concept car they unveiled. Of all the manufacturers exhibiting, VW really stood out and looked seemingly unshaken by the economic downturn. The display stand was updated this year and while simpler in design, it still looked fresh and bright. The company constructed a large stage which featured the Blue [...]

We mentioned earlier about the toned down atmosphere of the show this year. Everything from the design of the display stands to the number of cars exhibited was clearly cut back. Hyundai, riding a strong PR wavy from having won North American Car of the Year honors for its Genesis sedan, really let loose with communications we’ve never seen at the show but reflect the times. Surrounding their display area, large panels were suspended from the ceiling containing messaging appealing to prudent decision making. One panel in particular which says ‘Assurance: Certainty in Uncertain Times’ really seemed to sum up [...]

At the 2008 Detroit auto show, we were impressed the importance given to promoting hybrid vehicles by car makers. This year we expected everyone to have some sort of alternative powerplant on display. We’ve seen lots of examples of vehicles badged with the hybrid name. But not all hybrids are the same. The challenge now is to differentiate one from the next. At the show this year we noticed a broader variety of language being used to describe each vehicle type. The most evolved is probably the Mini E which manages to include the manufacturer name and forgoes the hybrid [...]

Much of the show extravagance of years past was missing from the show this time. We’ll talk more about that later. But there were still a few interesting experiments some automakers were trying on the show floor to attract consumers attention.
Lincoln set up an art exhibition to support the debut of its new MKT crossover vehicle. The gallery featured significant works by contemporary artists with local connections to the Detroit area. The exhibition was curated by Detroit artist and designer Brian Kritzman, who is currently a professor of Industrial Design at Wayne State University.
This collection both reflects and comments on [...]

Toyota chose the 2009 Detroit auto show to debut its new 3rd generation Prius model. The car served as the centerpiece of Toyota expanding line of hybrid vehicles. Rather than print up a typical glossy brochure, the company gave away thousands of paper cards with seeds embedded in them. The front contains a simple tag line that says ‘Good ideas grow. Literally.’ The back has the planting instructions, which are essentially burying the card in soil and watering it. Each card contains a mix of annual and perennial wildflower seeds.
This is the first article of PSFK’s review of the 2009 [...]