Foundations 19 – Infrastructure Space

The two leaders of this mobile workshop, Reed Kroloff and Gregory Wittkopp, took the participants to three building complexes that are exemplary for social development and manu- facturing in the greater Detroit area. The infrastructural logic of each complex was assessed and discussed by the group. Lafayette Park is located on a site where racial tension had once repeatedly flared. In the 1950s the city decided to completely re- design the site by creating a housing project, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and Alfred Caldwell. Unusual at that time was the intention to house people of different ethnicities and income levels within the same neighborhood. Many aspects of the program have proven successful over the long term. The second destination of the group is above all technologically im- pressive: the “Dymaxion House” – a prototype lightweight house. This aluminum building was designed by Richard Buckminster Fuller between 1944 and 1946 and intended for mass production. The final stop of the mobile workshop was the Cranbrook Acade- my of Art and the Cranbrook Art Museum. Newspaper publisher George Booth founded the school, which was designed by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and opened one department at a time starting in 1920. Rafael Moneo augmented the impressive buildings with his museum in 2002.

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