The Decrepit Appeal Of Detroit's Newest Museum

"Ever since the great suburban exodus of the postwar years, American cities have experienced varying degrees of panic about their identities. One result is that more and more cities have taken on many of the qualities of suburbs to survive. Meanwhile, the once-smooth surface of suburbia has cracked open, revealing a dark underbelly that once seemed to be the exclusive realm of the city.

The new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit is a radical rejoinder to this seismic shift. Housed in an abandoned car dealership on a barren strip of Woodward Avenue, it fits loosely into a decades-long effort to restore energy to an area that was abandoned during the white flight of the 1970s.

But the design springs from a profound rethinking of what constitutes urban revitalization. Designed by Andrew Zago, its intentionally raw aesthetic is conceived as an act of guerrilla architecture, one that accepts decay as fact rather than attempt to create a false vision of urban density. By embracing reality, it could succeed where large-scale development has so far failed."