Accepting Decay

Pretty interesting writeup in in the NYT today about the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit:

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.

And later:

For the opening of the museum, the graffiti artist Barry McGee spray-painted the brick facade with bold swirling letters. The graffiti echoes the colorfully painted convenience stores with Lotto signs that have sprouted up around Detroit in former brick bank buildings. (The city’s planning department tends to regard the signs as a form of architectural vandalism.)

I’ve never spent any time in Detroit, despite having wanted to for years. Maybe in ’07. Here’s the whole article. Here’s the museum’s site.