Urban Scarification an Architectural Strategy of Healing
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Urban Scarification an architectural strategy of healing Theresa A. Skora Theresa A. Skora Urban Scarification Masters of Architecture University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture ARCH 5100, 5110, 5200, 5210 Adjunct Professor Mark Farlow 30 April 2010 2 Contents Abstract - 4 Introduction - 5 Detroit - 17 Brush Park - 21 Wound + Heal = Scar - 27 Scarification - 35 Analysis - 45 Program Development - 65 Urban Scarification - 75 Precedents - 91 Bibliography - 103 Credits - 107 Abstract The Motor City takes pride in its rich penetrate throughout the lives of its history. As a former leader in industry residents. In contrast, abandoned houses and advancement, Detroit continues are not preserved and do not provide to thrive on international automotive enhancement to the community and renown, business enterprise and negatively affect its residents. However, riverfront development. Beautifully like a preserved home, the history of restored historic districts, such as Indian an abandoned building still remains. Village, Sherwood Forest and Corktown The body of a building experiences enclose pockets of communities scattered architectonic wounds, healing and throughout the city, where neighborhood scarring. Wounds include structurally associations come together as one in unstable elements, such as broken each area. Over the decades however, windows and collapsed roofs. Healing the city has become victim to racially- incorporates the temporary protection of charged riots, government leadership broken elements from further damage. scandals and economic deficiencies. And scarring occurs after the building is Parts of the city have become dangerous healed and when it is restored, but not to and volatile due to an increase of illegal its original state. Through this working drug handling, gang violence and analogy, a new understanding can begin criminal behavior. Slowly, but steadily, to unfold a different perspective on how people of the city have moved out and a neighborhood can be re-identified. This found refuge in neighboring suburbs. thesis seeks to explore urban scarification The only things left in these forgotten as a means of re-establishing the identity areas are the memories of life, the of an area that has lost its density through histories of people that contributed to a specific and direct intervention. It a once thriving metropolis. Time and examines the healing potential of the character are carefully preserved and landscape as a method to promote new restored in the historic districts, which life and identity for a broken community. allow for architectural aesthetics and community enhancement to positively 4 Introduction foundation and research Brush Park Drawing 1.1 10/25/09 Erskine St. “Vines” 6 Introduction To know where you are going, New materials and structurally stable you must know where you have been. elements reinforce and reconnect the A person’s history plays an important damaged material of the building. After role when it comes to knowing who that the healing is completed, the building will person really is. Everyday experiences contain layers of its past (old materials) and ordinary encounters with others in conjunction with its new layers of skin help shape a person’s character. People (materials added to make new). These learn from their mistakes and encounter inter-connective layers of materials can situations that enrich their knowledge be considered the architectonic scars of of the world around them. Among these a building. Much like biological scars, situations and life lessons, are scars that these architectonic scars enrich the accumulate over the years. Scars from character of the building and add to its physical injury and accidents have healed own history. over time, and remain on the surface of a person’s skin. Over the years, a scar might become less noticeable and smooth away, and its color might fade to the normal skin tone. Nevertheless, a scar contains the experiential quality which enhances the life of its bearer and serves as a reminder of the past. In a similar way, buildings accumulate their own souvenirs of the past. A building can be wounded, through structural damage and failure, due to arson, vandalism, and natural weathering. After these wounds occur, the building can undergo healing stages of restoration, renovation or preservation. 7 Memories We all have many stories and In this way, the memories that we several memories of times when we, as keep stored in our minds, the special ones children, scraped our knee playing street that bring our child-self to the present, are ball, cut our finger on the rusty fence or the psychological experiences we sub- crashed our bike in the neighbor’s bushes. consciously return to in our experience Or perhaps, we can remember the time of the built environment as home. He when we burnt our hand touching a hot continues further that “memories are stove, or laying in bed, sick with the motionless and the more securely they chicken pox. Given the experiences and are fixed in space, the sounder they are” the memories, what physically remains (P. 9). So in our experiences of our own is the scar that formed from the cut on childhood home, we can usually find the finger, or the blister on the hand. a sense of stability and mental clarity These experiences are the ones that in the present day of living in the built occur during our childhood at home or environment. However, that sense of perhaps in the old neighborhood where stability and clarity can be tainted in we grew up. the case of an abandoned house or Gaston Bachelard, in The Poetics community. Because of the physical of Space, remind us of the importance instability of an abandoned house, we of childhood memories and how they perhaps cannot fully benefit from the influence a person’s experience through experiential quality of our childhood space. He writes, “Through dreams, memories. the various dwelling places in our lives co-penetrate and retain the treasures of former days. And after we are in the new house, when memories of other places we have lived in come back to us, we travel to the land of Motionless Childhood, motionless the way all Immemorial things are” (p. 5). 8 Chapter Title Preservation Our childhood memories become and the present day. While there is the part of our own history. They enhance connection with the past, there is the our personal characteristics with unique sense of returning back to the starting experiences and distinct qualities. We point of its existence. The house that is find a sense of belonging or foundation historically preserved, returned back to in knowing the past, in knowing its original architectural state, comes full where we came from. And it is in our circle from its current conditions to its childhood development that we learn beginning. And the person who looks the fundamentals of life and the world at the preserved facade of the house, around us. can feel a sense of reverence for this In thinking about the built instance of living history of the built environment, the life of a building begins environment. at the planning and construction phases. However, in the case of A building, more specifically a house, deterioration and neglect due to usually has a distinctive architectural abandonment, the image of a broken and style that gives it certain characteristics dirty house with overgrown vegetation which become part of its history. While appeals to the emotions of sadness and some residential architectural styles are hopelessness. It can be mentally draining more prominent than other vernacular to see a house that is completely exposed styles, the house may go through to the elements, with a collapsed roof, and renovations or repairs. broken windows, a victim of vandalism. The preservationist architect, We tend to feel this sadness because we James Marston Fitch wrote in The can experientially relate to the family Philosophy of Restoration that the that once lived in the abandoned house. “preservation of the historic built We think of our own home, the one we world is critical to man’s psychic and grew up in, the one that was witness to emotional well-being.” To preserve the our lives. history of our built world is to keep the connection open between the past 10 Terrain Vague Just as we can visualize the also promise, the space of the possible, abandoned house as the shell of a of expectation” (120). So, rather than living organism, providing shelter to its seeing the empty lot as negative space, inhabitants and obtaining the status of unusable and neglected, it can be seen as ‘home’, we can easily imagine a vacant lot a new canvas for opportunity to grow. with remnants of existence. The vacant lot in an urban setting, with overgrown vegetation was once occupied with a house and garage. There was a front yard with a tree that had a tire swing for the neighborhood children and in the back yard, a flower garden attracted the bees and butterflies in the summertime. But now, the vacant land has returned back to nature, with wild flowers and weeds. The landscape has been flattened. In his article, Terrain Vague, Ignasio de Sola-Morales Rubio gives an explanation of the potential of the vacant landscape. He writes that terrain vague, is “an empty abandoned space in which a series of occurrences have taken place” (119). Whether or not proof of its past is physically present or not, the landscape still has a past. And furthermore, the current conditions of the vacant lot can influence new opportunity to occur. Sola-Morales Rubio explicitly states that the terrain vague is “void, absence, yet 12 Chapter Title Abandonment At one point, the vacant volcanic action, and toxicity disease. A landscape was not vacant. It had a city in Arizona that was a gold mining definite purpose, to provide space for a town, but once the natural resource ran house, or a commercial building.