Juxtaposing the imagination of Power House Productions and architect Catie Newell's adaptive reuse of abandoned homes in Detroit with the bureaucratic mechanism of the Detroit Works Project, it's clear that the city could take a page from our local artists' imagination. Metropolis wonders why the Detroit Works Project is focusing on shrinking, not saving blighted structures across the city. This writer's idea? Rename the whole thing the Detroit Dreams Project. That's quite an idea.
Catie Newell teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, but her built work -- if that’s what you can call it -- is mainly in Detroit. "Anything that's new construction, particularly in this urban landscape, looks entirely out of place here," she said to me. "Maybe that's where the offensive part comes in." She was saying that new construction -- in Detroit, where so many old buildings stand empty -- was not only a bad idea but an offensive one. This, from an architect?
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