Please join the AIA Detroit Board and membership at our 2022 Annual Meeting, taking place on Tuesday, November 15th, at the American Interiors office in Novi, beginning at 6:00pm.

This meeting will include the annual report to the membership and the election of the 2023 AIA Detroit Board of Directors. We will discuss what the AIA Detroit Board has been working on internally this year, reveal our new Strategic Plan, and reflect on how that will affect the direction of the organization going forward.

Food and beverages will be provided. We hope you will attend!

The Annual Meeting is one of the few times throughout the year that AIA Detroit can reflect on our progress and discuss the future of the organization with our members.

Those unable to attend the 2022 Annual Meeting may request an absentee ballot by emailing elections@aiadetroit.com with your name and AIA Member number by Nov 14, 5pm. Absentee ballots must be completed by 12:00pm on November 15th. (You must be an AIA Detroit Member in good standing to vote)

RSVP Here for the 2022 Annual Meeting

GET TO KNOW THIS YEAR’S SLATE OF CANDIDATES… (more…)

Katherine Flynn | AIA Blueprint For Better

The Frosty Morn meat packing factory in Clarksville, Tenn.—all 52,600 square feet of it—has sat vacant since 1977. “Nobody’s ever spent any money to keep the roof up,” says John Hilborn, City Project Manager at the City of Clarksville. “When it rains, it rains as much inside the building as it does outside.”

In its heyday, the Frosty Morn plant was a major employer in northern Tennessee. City officials think that, with the right renovations, the building has the potential to return to its former role as an anchor of the community—this time housing local businesses.

“The way that Clarksville is growing, that area has not evolved with the areas around it,” says Pam Powell, AIA, of the vicinity surrounding Frosty Morn. “It’s in an under-developed neighborhood, really. I think it’s a perfect location for being a catalyst for change for the people that live there.”

The building’s iconic smokestack—torn down in 2020 amid safety concerns—has a chance at rising again thanks to the 2022 Mayors Innovative Design Cohort, a partnership between the Mayors Innovation Project and The American Institute of Architects’ Blueprint for Better campaign that will revitalize Frosty Morn and two other underused sites around the country. Blueprint for Better targets mayors and civic leaders to work with architects to transform their towns into sustainable, resilient, equitable communities.

This year’s three winning sites received technical assistance from project architects, peer learning opportunities, and a stipend to help cover the costs of staff time, project management, and community engagement.

AIA Middle Tennessee is in the process of shepherding revitalization of the Frosty Morn building for the city of Clarkesville, helping city officials understand what is possible through tours of similar former industrial structures that have been repurposed, like the Neuhoff Meat Packing Plant in Nashville.

Clarksville’s Frosty Morn is in good company. In Eastpointe, Mich., members of AIA Detroit helped reimagine a former parking lot as an outdoor market and event space, and in Blacksburg, Va., the Cooks Cleaners dry-cleaning shop will be renovated—with the help of AIA Blue Ridge—into usable retail space. (more…)

Bryce Huffman | Bridge Detroit

A 3D-printing robot has begun creating the concrete walls for Detroit’s first factory-printed home.

The nonprofit Citizen Robotics began the work Tuesday in its warehouse in southwest Detroit. The house, also expected to be the first in the state of Michigan, will be built in sections and later assembled in the Islandview neighborhood on the city’s southeast side.

The single-story, two-bedroom house will be 850 square feet and marketed to low-income individuals earning 80% of the area median income – which is about $50,240 for a two-person household in Detroit.

Tom Woodman, executive director of Citizen Robotics, said if cities, states, and construction companies don’t begin to invest in the technology that makes building this home possible, “our housing stock will continue to decline.”

“Then the cost of housing will continue to go up and we’ll no longer be able to afford to live in vibrant walkable communities,” Woodman said.

A shift toward 3D-printed homes can help fill two of Detroit’s needs: more affordable housing units and making use of this city’s wide swaths of vacant land – about 19 square miles, according to Detroit Future City. Woodman told BridgeDetroit in April that he chose Detroit for the project because the city is “striving for solutions.”

Citizen Robotics also has other 3D-printed home projects planned for Flint and Grosse Pointe Woods. One of the benefits, Woodman said, is that 3D-printed homes are expected to need much less energy to heat and cool than a house made with conventional construction.

“That’s not only better for the future homeowners’ budget, it’s also more sustainable for the planet,” he said.

The structure of the home is expected to be done by the end of the year. The entire project, designed by Bryan Cook of Develop Architecture, who also is president of the Detroit chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, is expected to be fully complete in spring 2023.

Cook watched the printing robot Tuesday as it put down the first layers of concrete for one of the walls of the home and said “there’s still a lot of work to go.”

“But it feels really good to be standing here and actually like to see that it’s going up,” Cook said. “It’s happening so I’m just very proud and excited.”

Detroit City Councilman Coleman A. Young II recently requested an analysis from the council’s legal and policy staff on the prospect of a pilot program to build 3D houses in the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. He was seeking input from Detroit’s Housing and Revitalization Department and evaluating if the city could acquire a 3D printer and what it would cost.

The entire project in Detroit will cost about $230,000, according to Evelyn Woodman, the co-founder of Citizen Robotics, which is paying for some of the construction costs.

The Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) is covering the remaining $150,000. MSHDA officials have said the 3D house in Detroit will serve as a “proof of concept project” to help the state determine whether 3D home building is sustainable, cost-effective and energy efficient.

Last summer, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Citizen Robotics at the nonprofit’s warehouse to announce the state’s plan to invest $100 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding toward the construction of thousands of affordable homes statewide.

The first full 3D printed home in the country was unveiled at Austin’s South by Southwest conference in 2018, according to a city policy brief.

Read the original article here.

All current AIA Detroit Members are encouraged to save the date for the AIA Detroit Annual Business Meeting taking place on Tuesday, November 15th.  This meeting will include the annual report to the membership on milestones, events, and activity throughout the past year, and the election of the 2023 AIA Detroit Board of Directors.

Please send in your nominations for the 2023 AIA Detroit Board of Directors. Nominees must be AIA Detroit members in good standing.  Board Member duties will include governance, membership, and financial responsibilities (including sponsorship). The AIA Detroit Board meetings are not currently guaranteed to meet in person every month.

Please send nominations for the 2023 AIA Detroit board to elections@aiadetroit.com. Nominations are due by 5pm on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14th.

2023 Board of Directors
Open positions and Certified Candidates

Director Positions eligible for election:
• (1) Detroit Director (3-year term)
• (1) Affiliate Director (Must be Professional Affiliate Member; 1-year term)
• (1) Associate Director (Must be Associate Member; 1-year term)

Executive Committee positions eligible for election:
• (1) Treasurer (Must be Architect or Associate Member; 2-year term)
• (1) Vice President/President-Elect (Must be Architect Member; 3-year term, including succession to President and Past-President)

Declare Your Candidacy

The Building Enclosure Council of Greater Detroit is electing a new Director to serve on their board!

Voting must be completed by 12pm on October 17th, 2022.

THE 2023 BEC-GD CANDIDATES: (more…)

Sarah Raza | Detroit Free Press

Volunteers stacked bricks and sifted through dirt Thursday evening in a multiday effort to save the historic Virginia Park Street, one of Detroit’s last original brick roadways.

The street has witnessed history, but alongside that has come wear and tear, leaving it in desperate need of repair.

The community in New Center has been drawing new residents to its large Colonial Revival and Neo-Georgian style homes, and they don’t stay vacant for long. Residents say they love the neighborhood and want to maintain the block for their children and grandchildren that will come after them.

Nearly 20 people came to help Thursday evening, some showing up after a day of work and others joining with their families. Most said they volunteered because they love their neighborhood.

“We are a very strong community,” said Tony Smith, who has lived on Virginia Park Street for nearly three decades. “We look out for each other, our neighbors.

The street repair, organized by the Virginia Park block club, has been four years in the making, although longtime residents said they have wanted the street repaired for decades.  

Virginia Park Street was built for bikes and wagons 115 years ago before the automobile became the city’s main mode of transportation.

The Virginia Park Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. During the Detroit riot of 1967, a Patton M60 battle tank drove on the street, creating cracks in the street.

Decades later, General Motors experimented with the street grid in New Center, sending vehicles from cars to tractor-trailers through the street.

And when many of the east-west street roads in New Center were cut off from the Lodge Service Drive, thousands of vehicles cut through using Virginia Park Street, including ones like cement trucks and gasoline tankers, which only accelerated the damage. 

“Driving down the street, it can destroy your car,” said Zoe Bowman, who moved to the neighborhood last year. “But the road holds so much history … there’s nothing else like it in Detroit.”

The idea of repairing the road was proposed by Steve Waldrop, a longtime resident who moved to Virginia Park Street in 1972 to live in what was then a Wayne State University fraternity house.

He originally proposed the idea in 2018, but when repairs were proposed, the city offered to pave over the brick with asphalt.  

“The mayor said it wasn’t fair for him to spend millions of dollars on just three blocks of road,” said Jeff Cowin, who recently moved to the neighborhood and has helped organize the effort.

He added that given that the neighborhood was designated a historic site, the city has always wanted to repair the road but couldn’t justify the expense.

The neighbors, however, believed this quick fix would result in the loss of a historic piece of the neighborhood.

Once they decided they wanted to repair the brick in the road while maintaining its historic integrity, it quickly became clear that it would be an expensive undertaking that could cost up to a couple million dollars. 

Fortunately, a project between DTE Energy and ITC Holdings meant 1,000 feet of historic brick road needed to be removed in order to create a new substation. The bricks, 1904 Nelsonville Block pavers, match the bricks needed to repair Virginia Park Street.

When the companies heard about the block club’s project, they agreed to donate their bricks to the effort. 

Now, there are an estimated 20,000 brick pavers sitting in piles at 6460 East Vernor Highway, across from the Downtown Boxing Gym.

The task is to stack the bricks and transport them 3 miles west to Virginia Park Street, where they’ll sit on the neighbors’ lawns until the repair project begins. 

The block club sent out emails, passed out flyers, and created a Facebook event that ended up reaching even those from out of town. 

“I just came to help,” said Janet Rohloff, of St. Clair Shores. “I was born and raised on the lower east side, and it’s nice to meet with people and find out what’s happening in the community.” 

Patricia Felder, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1985, said the community has wanted to repair the street for years.

“We’ve been trying to repair the street for almost 30 years, but we didn’t have enough grant money,” she said. “Now it’s finally happening in 2022.”

For those interested in helping, the group said it looking for volunteers to come out and help on Friday until 9 p.m. and on Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. 

Read the original article here.

Sherri Welch | Crain’s Detroit Business

Design Core Detroit, the steward of Detroit’s UNESCO City of Design designation, has named two leaders of the organization as its new co-executive directors.

Bonnie Fahoome, director of business programs, and Kiana Wenzell, director of Detroit Month of Design, have been promoted to jointly lead the organization. They succeed Olga Stella, who was promoted to vice president of strategy and communication at the College for Creative Studies in September 2020 but had also continued to oversee the executive director responsibilities.

In her new role, Stella has oversight of marketing and communications and the Office of Partnerships and Community Arts Partnerships. She will focus her efforts on increasing the college’s visibility, grow new partnerships and develop the college’s new strategic plan for the future.

“Working together, Bonnie and Kiana have the vision, leadership, and collaborative style that will propel Design Core into its next phase of impact for Detroit’s design community,” Stella said in a release.”I could not be more confident and excited about the organization’s future and look forward to supporting them in their new roles.”

Read the original article here.

Christina Sturdivant Sani | TopicA

By Christina Sturdivant Sani

After co-founding Detroit-based Centric Design Studio and operating it for a decade, Saundra Little’s firm was acquired by Washington, D.C.-based Quinn Evans Architects in early 2019. With more than 15 years in the industry, Little had designed several notable projects at that point, including design-build renovations at Burton International Academy, a Detroit public school, and the award-winning design of the David Klein Gallery. The acquisition of Evans’ company landed her the role of principal in Quinn Evans’ Detroit office.

Three years earlier, Little’s history and documentation project Noir Design Parti was selected as one of Detroit’s winners in the 2016 Knight Foundation Arts Challenge. The project, which she conceptualized with historian and diversity and inclusion advocate Karen Burton, documents the careers and creative works of Detroit’s African American architects.

Most recently, Little accepted the position of director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Quinn Evans. “I’m interested in seeing how I can continue to move the needle in architecture for minorities in the profession,” she says. She also serves as the Midwest Vice President of the National Organization of Minority Architects.

Read on to learn about her passion for community development and history, the challenges on her road to becoming an architect, and vision for Noir Design Parti.

How would you describe your niche as an architect?

All roads lead to history. I work on a lot of adaptive reuse projects, and I do some new construction, but everything is in the community neighborhood setting. So I would say any project that has a community or historical impact.

Do you have any favorite projects?

I’ve done three co-working spaces: TechTown, SpaceLab Detroit, and then a concept for an art co-working space that hopefully gets built out in the next year. I like coworking spaces because I used to be a small business owner, and I feel like coworking spaces level the playing field for anybody starting a business. It gives you access to amenities that most small business owners who are bootstrapping can’t get, and it gives you a leg up.

A new favorite under construction now is Allied Media Projects. It is a four-story renovation to a warehouse building here in Detroit. The vision of the project is led by each of the tenants, who are all nonprofits.

Total accessibility for the building has been the focus of this renovation. They didn’t go straight for LEED certification but had sustainability, accessibility, and inclusive design in mind. I can’t wait for that project to be completed. It was just great working alongside an owner with a vision like that.

What initially sparked your interest in architecture?

It started with an interest in art and drawing, but I’ve found that along the way, there have been different things that led me to architecture without me even realizing it.

For instance, I visited a building that Nathan Johnson designed as a kid, and I was struck by the mid-century modern [design] and how he created this odd-shaped window without any structural kind of emphasis at this corner. And he completely framed out a view of the neighborhood.

What have been some of your biggest challenges on the road to becoming an architect?

It was tough not knowing a lot about the profession before heading into it in college. I didn’t have a mentor who could give me words of wisdom. My family was like, ‘Are you sure you want to be an architect? Nobody in our family is an architect.’ Though I didn’t have any support, I just went for it. And I’m lucky that I made it.

Why did you choose Noir Design Parti for your Knight Foundation submission?

Karen Burton and I had been talking about it for a long time. We always heard people say, ‘I didn’t know of any Black architects until I met you.’

But I came up through firms that were minority-owned. And I was like, how did they not know these people? I’ve also heard about Black architects from the trailblazing generations before me [who had] retired by the time I started to practice. So I was like, we have to get this out here because I don’t want to hear that anymore.

What have you enjoyed most about the project?

It’s been great seeing them highlighted and telling their stories. Just being the first of anything is history-making. Nathan Johnson started his practice in 1954 right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. There were only two or three architecture firms in the state of Michigan at that time that were Black—so that’s just remarkable to me.

We recently made it a focus of the project to write letters of recommendation for Black architects for AIA awards. So just to see these people get awards while they’re still living has really meant a lot to me.

Where do you see [this project] going in the future?

Now that we’ve gathered all this information, it needs to be archived [in] a place where people can look and learn about how Black architects did a lot of things against all odds. I’m also interested in getting a book done so we can have a print version of what we’ve been researching.

Have you been able to outline your priorities as Director of DEI at Quinn Evans?

Trying to figure out the pandemic and this position at the same time has been interesting. But one of the goals for this year is to come up with objectives for the position and the firm.

One of the things that got me very interested in Quinn Evans when we were talking about the acquisition was that, as of April of this year, Quinn Evans will be a woman-owned firm. A 200-person firm that’s woman-owned interested me three years ago, and to see it really come to light this year is going to be amazing. I think that’s going to be a great attraction for diversity when others hear about the big changeover in April.

Read the original interview here.

Pansy Schulman | Architectural Record

The Detroit-based architect puts her focus on socially conscious work.

As part of an ongoing interview series about the future of practice, RECORD is speaking to small firm-owners who are representative of the younger cohort of architects who are, both consciously and instinctively, trying to practice the business of architecture differently.

Imani Day, 32, graduated from Cornell University in 2011 with a Bachelor’s in Architecture. After working for Robert A.M. Stern Architects and Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York, she moved to Detroit in 2015 to work for Gensler. Her firm, RVSN Studios, began as a part-time project in 2018, but in April of last year, Day formally left Gensler to focus on running her studio full time. Day has taught at the University of Detroit Mercy and Florida A&M University and will be starting a research fellowship at Cornell this fall. She serves on the executive boards of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and the AIA’s Detroit chapter. Day is the 13th Black woman to become a licensed architect in the state of Michigan and the 463rd in America.

Can you tell me about your time in school and coming up as an architect?

I came to Cornell in the summer of 2007, for a pre-college summer program for minority students. It helped me feel a little bit more comfortable on campus, but like any experience of coming to any predominantly white institution, it was a pretty strong shock to the system. Where I’m from in Montclair is a very diverse, liberal suburb of New York City. I don’t recall ever being the only person of color in the room. But at Cornell, I was one of maybe five or six Black students in my year.

I love Cornell, but nothing of my identity or my known history really ever showed up in the curriculum. My grandparents are civil rights activists and writers, who are so well versed and rooted in Black history. And I just never saw anyone who looked like me, which is common among Black architects.

Before starting your own firm, you worked at several large firms. How was that transition from academic to professional life?

The start of my career was really me trying to find my actual interest and grounding. I spent time working on cool projects, trying to find my voice, and navigating some of that imposter syndrome of: “Am I on the same page as everyone else?” “Can I keep up in conversations?” The most important career advice I’ve ever gotten came from Liz Diller. She told me to find my voice, use it very specifically, and be as vocal as possible. That was the beginning of me starting to talk about the disconnects I see in the industry.

What are the disconnects that stood out to you?

If you look at MASS Design Group, for example, many times people say they do really great, important work, but their business model isn’t replicable. Or that because they are doing it, let them do it, problem solved. There’s so much to be said about American Black issues that need to become a standard, normal part of how we practice as an industry. That was a huge missing link for me. I wasn’t really seeing other Black people working with me, or a Black client, which concerned me. And when I found myself working on some big museum project or someone’s lake house, I thought, well this is cool, but it’s very far from where I thought I would be.

Why did you decide to break off and start your own firm?

I started my own firm because there’s such a big gap in the industry for Black female architects, and a really big demand for clients who want to keep their funds and their work in the Black community. One part of that is being able to show up for the community, to know and understand the vulnerabilities and the historical traumas that come from white people in the industry damaging or erasing Black communities.

Good design can coexist with communities in need. It doesn’t mean that we have to sacrifice something along the way. We need to get better at understanding and reworking our systems in the industry so we can do this work better. That was something that I couldn’t do working for a firm; I really had to chew on this by myself and then find collaborators who are on the same page.

RVSN’s first project was the Lip Bar in 2018. How did that project come about?

I was just starting out with RVSN and honestly, the client, Melissa Butler, really took a leap of faith with me. It was small but a big marker in my career as an independent architect. I realized that there was actually going to be a supply and demand issue here. There are Black people and business owners all over America, but in Detroit particularly, there are young, hungry change agents in their community looking to work with someone like them, of which there are finite numbers. It is really a special opportunity and experience as a Black architect to be able to say that the majority of my clients are Black.

What kind of projects do you take on now and how has the scope of your practice expanded?

There’s a very clear thread in my brain of healing neighborhoods from the trauma of historical divesting. The work that I choose to take on typically has to have some socially progressive attitude. Almost all of my projects now are either multifamily or single residential in Detroit. We have a neighborhood project that is working to bring very simple concepts of health, wealth, agency, advocacy organizing, and enough resources into a neglected community. The commercial spaces are usually by these very fun, cool, young Black clients just trying to put resources in their neighborhoods. The first thing that I understood about Lip Bar, for example, was that there is a really big gap in representation in the beauty industry. People like me don’t necessarily see ourselves represented in the beauty industry; products are not made for us, the colors are not made for us. [The founders of Lip Bar] are change agents in the makeup industry.

RVSN is not architecture only; we do a lot of design-related projects, too. We just did a fun project creating a logo and graphic signature for a Black film company. A Black law firm in Chicago came to us for brand strategy. We’ve been collaborating with poets for hypothetical projects. We’re in our first year and a lot is in the works.

Do you have specific business practices that you’ve put into place in terms of your work environment and the expectations you set for your employees?

I have two employees—one is a student, and they’re both in entry-level positions. That number flexes into five other people that could be on a project at any point in time, but they’re all in. I don’t know that there’s a perfect business model for firms like us, but I think a lot of us are operating in a similar capacity where we call on each other project by project to see what is possible. I think I care the most about flexibility and people feeling like this is a good investment of their time. There’s still this pattern and habit that says anxiety and depression are good: “Stay here all night. I don’t care.” But there’s a lot to be learned from the generation coming into the workforce right now that actually wants their mental health to be respected. The power is coming back to the employee.

How do you see RVSN moving forward?

We’re so new. There’s a lot of room for input. I want to remain very open-minded. I think flexibility is going to be important, and I’m hoping and aiming to have this be something [my employees] are proud of what we’re building too. I know the work will come and I know that there’s plenty of work to be done in the neighborhoods and in the communities that I work in. I don’t see that there’s any shortage of ability to run the company and be profitable. It’s going to be about actually sustaining a good culture within the company—keeping people feeling empowered and able to make change in the company as well.

Read the original interview here.

JC Reindl | Detroit Free Press

Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm has released updated renderings of what its ambitious Hudson’s site development will look like once construction finishes in a few years.

The images were recently shared on the project’s website at Hudsonssitedetroit.com

The development, 1208 Woodward Ave. downtown, broke ground in December 2017 and is still under construction. 

The project consists of two buildings: a skyscraper with luxury residences and a luxury hotel, and an 11-story mid-rise with more than 550,000 square feet of office space, exhibition space and ground-floor retail, according to the website.

The buildings are expected to be done in 2024, two years behind the project’s originally announced timeline.

On Wednesday, city officials approved a variance for the skyscraper’s upper-level floorplates, which Bedrock representatives said was needed because the tower’s floorplates will get increasingly smaller at higher levels.

Bedrock has yet to announce how many floors the skyscraper will have, although building permits last year put it at 49 floors and 680 feet in height. Early on, the tower was planned to soar 912 feet tall — overshadowing the 727-foot-tall Renaissance Center — but plans were downsized.

The skyscraper’s 100 to 120 luxury apartments and condos will begin at floor 26, and the 227-room hotel is to go below.

Bedrock has yet to announce the hotel brand. The Free Press reported last fall on the possibility of an ultra-luxury Edition Hotel in the skyscraper, and Crain’s Detroit, citing an anonymous source, recently reported that Edition Hotels last year signed an agreement for the site.

The Hudson’s site was once home to the massive J.L. Hudson department store, which closed in 1983 and was imploded in 1998.

Read the original article here.