part 1: philosophy

Part of our team's ambition in these competitions is to explore and discover without the trappings of the university and the safety of the authority of our professors what is is we find important in design. We want to develop our personal outlook and theory on urban environments. Detroit has been both challenging and helpful in this respect. people have all sorts of ideas about how to "bring back" or "bring about" the "old Detroit in a new way" or to "fix" it or otherwise condescend to the current environment or population and culture that exists and develops there now. Our views have through personal dialogue and experience begun to surface in a clear way with special consideration to this problem-- we don't want to be designers that attempt to "solve" a "problem," in fact what we want to do is approach the idea of the city environment with a completely different belief-- that what exists now is beautiful-- not that it could be beautiful "if only," but strongly and adamantly is. The eye of an architect or dreamer, however, is different than someone trained in a different pursuit. It is our job, then, to accentuate and give a means to experience those places of legitimate beauty in order for people who may otherwise flee from what they see as degradation and change to stop, to slow down, to appreciate.

For too long, we feel, the culture of car and road has led to a new culture of speed that does not allow us to experience the most primitive and important aspect of human knowledge and the basis of architecture-- that of the senses. But lets take that example of car and road for a moment to illustrate our outlook. What we are saying is this: "So now, through choice and circumstance, there are a great deal of highways and vehicles that move things and people, that create noises, cut up neighborhoods, create new boundaries and shift views of the sky, earth and water. But you know what? There is beauty." Our job as designers is to create framework in order that people can experience that beauty. That is our challenge and work.