tictac

non-typological

inspiringaffordable

multi-generational

inclusivesustainable

catalyticvisionaryadaptive

productiveunexpectedconnectedpermeable

multi-ethnicflexiblediverse

transformativeunrestricted

pedestrian friendly

synergistichybrid

multi-racialexperimental

Detroit is experiencing unparalleled demand for housing, especially adequate accommodations for changing economic realities and for an increasingly diverse population. Only new forms of housing design and planning tools can address the changing demands on the living environment.

Innovation, however, is constrained by prevailing and non-adaptive economic principles, traditional marketing schemes, and outdated masterplans, inadequate zoning regulations, and traditional definitions of how we live that are often not in tune with the needs of contemporary urban residents.

The Tic Tac Toe studio will look creatively at urban density through the lenses of how we live in the urban context - from the unit to the street to the neighborhood. Demographic changes, new ways of working and living, and a desire for active and cultural urban space require more differentiated and inclusive approaches to the planning and design of contemporary housing.

This studio offers the opportunity to develop and test alternative concepts for housing through the creation of environments that question normative urban routines and housing typologies. Student teams of three will explore how different and novel programmatic elements and combinations can contribute to vibrant and resilient housing. The envisioned projects will react to new and emerging structures of habitation, testing a variety of innovative housing models while creating catalytic, inclusive, and transformative urban spaces.

In collaboration with the Detroit Planning Department, the studio teams will explore the synergistic proposition of living and working in the former center of Detroit’s automobile production near Henry Ford’s first workshop at Piquette St. and around the former Fisher Body Plant #21. The 10 acre site will have room for experimentation and hybridization, and can be a testing ground for urban, architectural environmental and ecological solutions.

The Tic Tac Toe student teams will develop and present convincing and inspiring arguments through systematic, environmental and social concepts. Within these frameworks, they will explore issues such as urban design, domesticity, communal living, economies of production, constructability, and others. The outcomes will demonstrate innovation in alternative construction and integrative systems.

The studio is set up to be taught both in person and remote and in accor-dance to the regulations of the CDC. Students, may work in studio should they desire to do so. Lectures and reviews will be conducted remotely.

Arch 672 Systems Studio Fall 2021Taubman College of Architecture and Urban PlanningUniversity of Michigan

Prof. Christina Hansenhansench@umich.edu

Prof. Lars Gräbnergraebner@umich.edu

Mondays and Thursdays 1:00 - 6:00

The End of Housing as we

know it -The revision of how we live in

the city

Although there is an urgent need for housing across the U.S. for low- and middle-income households, construction of new housing is far from keeping pace due to lack of public subsidies, high land costs, labor shortages and increasing supply chain complexities. For multifamily buildings, the economics of construction, coupled with local policy and building code, directly shape what new housing can look like — its size, massing, materiality, among other qualities. At best, these intertwined parameters help ensure quality, life safety, and consistent urban character. At worst, these constraints have led to formulaic designs, particularly in bottom-line driven developments that result in sameness regardless of local context. And too often, new multifamily buildings target high-income tenants, squeezing out middle- and low-income households.

These problems in housing are compounded by the dominance of an American emblem in the built environment: the owner-occupied single-family home. For 75% of residential land in the U.S., zoning ordinances continue to prohibit building anything other than a detached single-family house. The significance of this legacy is multifold. The laws regulating housing density were enacted as a way to intentionally segregate neighborhoods by race and class and they still function as such. Single-family houses are more expensive to build, purchase, and maintain than apartments, making them unattainable to many. And their large footprints, low density, and typical reliance on automobiles make single-family homes far more carbon-intensive than multi-unit buildings. Spurred by these crises in housing affordability, racial equity, and climate change, the federal government and many municipalities have begun to challenge the sustainability of such an exclusive form of housing.

Recently, some urban planners, architects, and developers have begun to advocate for a housing typology that mediates between these two extremes in order to increase neighborhood density and thus, housing affordability. Called “Missing Middle Housing,” this typology is emerging as a strategy for working incrementally against

the strictures of zoning to create a walkable density close to urban centers.

While it holds promise, the concept of Missing Middle Housing was designed to preserve the ‘traditional character’ of single-family neighborhoods. As such, many Missing Middle projects are orthodox in their design, missing an opportunity to merge increased density and scale with innovations in construction and materials or forward-thinking ideas about lifestyle and program. Grounded in this contemporary debate around affordable density, this studio will experiment with alternate notions of ‘middle’ that can make high-quality homes accessible to more residents.

Studio MethodologyFinal design projects will propose hybrid scales, unit densities, and building types between the two extremes of the single family home and the monolithic housing block. To arrive at a strategy for an alternate middle, students will start by analyzing precedents that represent either end of this spectrum, understanding the relationship between construction type, building size, and housing typology. Design exercises will test conceptual approaches for bridging between these scales — hybridizing, averaging, blending, sampling, and so on — before introducing considerations of structure, material, site planning, and massing.

Students will work individually for the first weeks of the semester, and then in groups of 3 or 4 for the remainder of the term. Final projects will be sited in Detroit and include 60-80 units across multiple buildings, with variation in scale and unit type.

In the Middle: Hybrid Types for New Homes

University of Michigan // Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning

This studio will be conducted in

hybrid format with both in-person

and online components.

ARCH672: Systems Studio, Fall 2021Monday + Thursday, 1pm - 6pm

Instructors: Ellie Abrons + Meredith Miller

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People would come from everywhere. It was the center of entertainment.There was no entertainment like that in the city at the time. We called it ‘Sugar Hill’ really.Everything there was just poppin

--Beans Bowles, a Detroit musician from the 1940’s,

“We called it Sugar Hill really.”

Arch 672 | wecalleditsugarhill | Fall 2021 | Claudia Wigger, Craig Borum | Mondays and Thursdays: 1pm-6pmStudio sessions will meet in person to the extent possible based on CDC and University guidelines

Martin Creed, No. 790, everything is going to be alright, 2007 @ MOCAD

Sugar Hill is a two-block district in Midtown Detroit bound by Woodward Avenue, Wayne State University and the Detroit Medical Center. It is currently home to a combination of residential, mixed-use, and arts-related businesses, and the the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). But in the 1940s, 50’s and 60’s, it was the center of a growing music and entertainment district. As part of that legacy it plays a significant role in the social history of Detroit as one of the only racially integrated neighborhoods where black and white musicians and patrons to co-mingle in an otherwise highly segregated urban landscape. Many of the nation’s most important jazz musicians, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and countless others played in the clubs and stayed in the hotels that comprised the jazz district.

Yet today, even with its central location in the city and its cultural significance and rich history, the current landscape is associated more with parking lots than as a place unto itself.

Seeing the economic development opportunities driven by the arts in adjacent neighborhoods, the studio will look into potential for highlighting the area’s art and cultural heritage as a way to attract visitors and economic stimulus. In partnership with MOCAD and Artspace “We called it Sugarhill” will seek to establish new housing within the Sugar Hill Arts District that leverages programming, construction and design to create affordable, equitable and sustainable living and working opportunities for the growing community of artists and their families. This studio will explore architectural strategies and tactics that reinforce affordability, diversity and creative approaches to urban living.

Fall 2021 Arch 672 Systems Studio Mick Kennedy Kit Krankel McCullough

COMING TOGETHER

We are coming together again.

We are reemerging, eyes blinking, into the world of others, in the place that we are.

We are sharing space once more. We are returning to the experience of our physical being. We feel heat, see light, hear sound. The ways in which our bodies respond to place create patterns of living that remain timeless and universal. Light, heat, sound are particular to place. The activities of daily life shape spaces in response to the phenomena of place. Patterns of living in place form typologies that are specific to locale. Place is further defined by physical materials. Perception is exquisitely localvore.Our study of patterns will operate at multiple scales: We will examine the patterns of place and typologies that serve as increments of neighborhood. We will study the patterns of living that inform increments of housing. 

We will examine patterns of occupation that shape rooms, and the patterns of activity that shape the increments of rooms: doors, windows, thresholds. We will study the patterns of daily life—sleeping, bathing, cooking, eating—that create the places we call our homes. We will consider how these activities can bring us together to form community.

We will explore how place shapes the architecture of housing, and how housing shapes the life within and the life without—the communal life that binds us together.We are coming together again.