Midtown Midrise
2023 / Detroit MI
SUPERPORCH
Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood features mid-rise apartment buildings with large front yards and distinctive recessed porches on multiple levels. The facade expression for this 37,000 SF, 4-story mixed-use multifamily reinvents the historic superporch prevalent throughout the Willis-Selden Local Historic District as an enhanced social amenity. Meeting the ground with a small cafe and landscaped yard, the folded planes create facade depth while maximizing views and providing unique outdoor balconies for units facing West Willis.
CUT AND FOLD
The folded front acknowledges the building’s existing neighbors, bending in from larger buildings to one side, and out to align with a smaller Victorian house on the other. Adjusting to its surroundings, the facade geometry frames the building’s entry lobby and activates the front yard setback as a landscaped extension of the pedestrian life of the street. Textured metal cladding pays homage to Detroit’s history of metal fabrication and industrial production with a mix of standing seam and corrugated metal with panels of varying widths offset by bright orange accents.
FINDING THE MISSING MIDDLE
With 35 apartments above a ground floor cafe, lobby and parking, the building serves as a model for mid-scale infill development in a city largely dominated by extra-large scale on the one hand and extreme vacancy on the other.
