Five Fellows: Full Scale is a collaborative project between five
architecture practices. In 2009, these practices collectively bought a
single-family house in Detroit for $500 cash at a county auction for foreclosed
properties. The project imagines new futures for Detroit and for its excess
stock of empty and abandoned houses through the creative repurposing of these
spaces. It uses the physical material of Detroit to project new programs for
old forms. Released from the programmatic exigencies of the single-family
house, former domestic spaces make possible new spatial projections, and each
of the practices produced a full-scale installation within the shared
infrastructure of the house. As a model of contemporary practice, the project
presents strategies of realization where, out of necessity, architecture is
nimble, promiscuous and expedient. Compelled to negotiate ever-changing
circumstances and maneuver unforeseen obstacles, the five, collaborating
architectural practices operate as a heterogeneous and loose
collective—negotiating terms that allow for action in an unpredictable
environment yet always maintaining and accommodating individual ambitions and
sensibilities. Architecture is cast more as a means rather than an ends—a means
to finding opportunity rather than solving problems—a technique that resonates
with the contemporary conditions of a city like Detroit.
A collaboration between Catie Newell of *Alibi Studio; Ellie Abrons with Adam Fure; MILLIGRAM-office; SCHAUM/SHIEH; and Thom Moran
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