de|cut

Detroit Center for Urban Talent

fall 2018

Located in the Dequindre Cut spanning between the river and midtown Detroit, this project proposes a school to provide current and upcoming generations of Detroiters with skills and tools to  respond to the needs of their city. An ever-changing schoolscape for the ever-changing Detroit.

School is implicitly spatio-temporal. The students are the future inhabitants and makers of the city space. The problems of the current state of education in Detroit prove the schoolʼs spatial agency as the shutdown local schools perpetuate the cycle of depopulation of the city. To break this cyclical destiny there is a need for a renewal in the approach to how we educate. 

In DE|CUT, school-cores of agriculture, construction, technics and academia aim to generate places of knowledge-making useful for Detroiters. The skills gained by the students are put to use for perpetuating the physical growth of the school-scape. Only a growth algorithm is designed, the outcome can be dictated by the future students.

Advisors: Maria Claudia Clemente + Francesco Isidori