Set in the center of the Eastern Market,

Block 4 seeks to mitigate Detroit’s affordable housing crisis b engaging the district’s development as a formal gesture for a new housing typology. Detroit has seen an increase in population moving back to its city centers yet failing to deliver the density of affordable housing needs while maintaining its local character. The design retains the site’s identity through formal manipulations based on their context, preserves and builds upon an existing relationship of the market conditions, and attracts new occupancies and energies through an innovative housing solution center. These legal maneuvers generate facades that the community and its residents activate. Thus, they deconstruct conventionally static facades into lively thresholds of vertical living where residents, neighbors, and pedestrians interact uniquely with the building. It’s not the tectonic achievement that matters, but rather the unification of the resident-market relationship and indoor-outdoor experiences that begin to activate, engage, and embody the community in which it resides. The Eastern Market proposal is the paradigm for future living in Detroit and ever-growing city centers.