w28th

My expectations for a well designed convention center are diminishing the further along we get into this.

I was going to put this in non-ohio projects, but I don't think that gets enough looks. Replacing "Detroit" with "Cleveland" works well also. Zago's Credo: Detroit Deserves Amazing Design http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/zago16908.aspx For Andrew Zago, space is a serious place. Not that you can't have fun there, too. The architect, who was born in Detroit and educated at the University of Michigan, started his engaging professional trajectory at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and has kept rising into lectureships, studio and faculty positions in New York and Los Angeles. With various major projects under construction or looming, Zago is an authentic international art and design star. With the edgy, urban and intriguing designs for places like Midtown's Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Corktown's Mercury Bar show, Detroit is benefiting. Detroit needs -- no, make that deserves, good design, Zago says. When we started our conversation with Zago in the summer of 2007, he was commuting from Detroit to New York. Two hours in his Midtown studio were largely spent reminiscing about the Detroit music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Zago would come over from Ann Arbor to see punk and new wave shows at Bookie's Club on W. McNichols. When we saw him again it was 15 months later on a sunny October afternoon at the corner of Michigan and 14th St., where his design work put the punctuation mark on the long in the works Mercury Coffee Bar project. Now he commutes to LA's SCI-Arc and his West Coast office, but his plain-speak, jargon-free but colorful design talk remains unchanged. A brief history of guerilla architecture Zago, 50, first got on the national radar in 1997, when he was awarded the Rome Prize, given annually to 15 emerging artists in various disciplines. Five years later, he was appointed director of the City College of New York Master of Architecture program. Zago has also taught at Cornell, Ohio State, UCLA and currently at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (better known as SCI-Arc). He also maintains offices for Zago Architecture in Detroit and Los Angeles, and was recently named a fellow by United States Artists, an artist-advocacy organization dedicated to supporting America's best artists by providing unrestricted cash grants. In 2006, Zago made headlines in the New York Times (and, not to be remiss, in Model D) for his design work on MOCAD. Nicolai Ouroussoff of the Times wrote that Zago recast the former auto dealership by employing "an intentionally raw aesthetic … conceived as an act of guerilla architecture, one that accepts decay as fact rather than attempt to create a false vision of density." In the same story, Zago said he wasn't trying to romanticize industrial decline, as many here do by default, but reveal Detroit's "depth of character, real substance and integrity. While you want to do away with the problems you don't want to lose that quality." Conceptual purity Back at the Mercury Coffee Bar, Zago uses the word "modest" to describe his work there, where he attempted to create an environment, a sustained mood, through "conceptual purity" and by giving the floor, walls and ceiling light treatments through color. The scheme is simple: cyan, magenta and yellow flows throughout the main floor of the space. There are irregularly shaped countertops, floating slabs and curved shelving (much of it fabricated by Detroit metal and woodworks collective Dormouse), tables and chairs, and huge windows that bring in spectacular views to the southwest (the old Michigan Central Train Station) the west (Roosevelt Park) and north across Michigan to Slow's Bar BQ. Zago says he set up the approach into the Mercury as "a separation from the street and into a funhouse ..." In the southwest corner of the space a a wooden staircase leads you into a something "more natural," a basement with exposed brick, more tables and chairs for dining and coffee drinking, and a bar still in the works that will offer beer and wine sometime in the new year. He says he works on a principle that Detroit deserves "rigorous and progressive architecture" and needs to "lose the attitude that if we just build something, it's good enough." Print that quote and put it under a refrigerator magnet. Third Wave for social change The next day Zago delivers a guest lecture at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture. The room overflows with students, instructors and curious design nerds as he mixes his multi-media presentation with slides of his projects, including competition entries for buildings in China and Sweden, and the occasional well-timed, self-tickling tangent — like showing the cover art for Iggy Pop's The Idiot LP. No we weren't sure what it meant, but it was great all the same. Also screened was a slow-moving, hallucinatory and panoramic film consisting of Detroit landscapes. In his talk, Zago brings up the notion of a third wave of coffee bars; the first wave being the generic nighthawk diner, the second a living room model and the third … something that has evolved into, well, a place much like the Mercury Coffee Bar, where awesome design values are married to an equally awesome coffee and food experience. And how is that marriage going? So far so very good, says MCB partner Todd Wickstrom, who once wanted to be a doctor but decided to work even harder it appears and become a catalyst for social change as a foodie/entrepreneur. Wickstrom has run jazz and BBQ joints in Kansas City, owned bakery franchises in Chicago and was a managing partner at Ann Arbor's Zingerman's Deli. He also helped start Heritage Foods USA, a company that promotes independent family farms, human production and genetic diversity. Neighborhood gateway At MCB, Wickstrom has fashioned a menu that includes a changing selection of sandwiches, panini, salads and soups, breakfast choices (like smoked salmon with tomato, onion, capers and cream cheese), a variety of espresso drinks (try the cute piccolo, equivalent to a mini latte) and three kinds of slow coffees – El Salvador los Immortales, Honduras la Tortuga and Kenya Ndaroini. Or have a fast coffee, called the El Diablo, in small or large sizes. The coffee comes from Chicago's Intelligentsia, which Wickstrom and Zago each separately call "the best in the world." Wickstrom says the first goal is to create a profitable business with a majority of the items on the menu eventually grown or raised here. A larger goal of the business is to bring 1,000 jobs to the area over a 20-year period based around fresh and healthy food cultivated in Detroit. He says when it's all tallied up, about $500,000 has gone into starting up the Mercury Bar project. "There is really a social mission at work here," Wickstrom says. "We see food as a way to economic development. I look out at Roosevelt Park and see a cool neighborhood emerging, a gateway between Corktown and Southwest Detroit. Andrew understands this thoroughly, which is why what he's doing with architecture and what we're doing with food is perfectly in sync."

Spot on 327. This really looks like a Kent State University dorm retread. I smell Volpe's hand in this no?

Hmm......

Reading the thread about the ESTC has some quotes from DaninDC. What a d-bag.

Not a signle mention of arguably the largest cause and contributor to the situation that we are in both environmentally and economically: suburban sprawl. I suppose plowing corn fields for cul de sacs, and polluting lakes and streams from the paved parking lagoons of Wal Mart is fine as long as the cars are plugged in. These politicians are so afraid of taking the extra step of talking about changing the very basics of American life, and that is unfortunate.

If the people are wrong though, don't the people that govern have a responsibility to explain the situation to the public and make objective decisions?

Zen Spa just opened up in their new space on W25th across from Garage Bar. A well done space for sure, and attractive female employees.

18 months for site selection is ridiculous. It's not as if construction documents are being created. The earliest the CC & MM could be open for business is probably 2013 (including the site selection, hopefully an international design competition, design development and construction documents, and finally, construction). We have a long road ahead of us.

Not sure where else to put this, but bitch slap these fools. http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2008/11/nashville_learns_from_the_most.php Last week, city officials from Nashville traveled to the shores of Lake Erie to study the most incompetently run town in America. That would be Cleveland, Ohio. They arrived to examine the city's new rapid bus line, which consists of little more than a rebuilt street with dedicated bus lanes, a lot of expensive cement, and some newly planted trees. Total cost: $200 million. Among Cleveland residents, it's the most ridiculed project in town -- and this is a city with a lot to ridicule. It's literally just a slightly faster bus line, running 100 blocks or so from downtown to the city's east side. And at a pricetag of $200 mil -- which mostly came from the feds -- it's largely viewed as the latest, greatest monument to government waste. Nashvillians were likely drawn by Cleveland's claims of instant prosperity. The Cleveland Plain Dealer is estimating the project will generate $4 billion in economic activity, according to this report by Nate Rau in The City Paper. Others have claimed it will create 7,000 new jobs. How a simple bus line will do all this has yet to be explained. Worse, it probably wouldn't work in Nashville. A line from downtown to the West End might be the most plausible option. But the Cleveland project runs through roughly 50 blocks of abandoned ghetto, making construction easier and less disruptive. And it still managed to kill many a business. In the prosperous West End, elongated construction would be a death sentence to businesses and make traffic a nightmare for years to come. And at the end of the day, all we'd have for our troubles and our $200 million is a slightly faster bus line.

Totally agree.

I know I heard that those were supposed to be removed during the renovations.

Ahhh, 5th floor Wright Hall...

I drank 3 Xmas Ales on saturday night (along with a Dort and a few Stellas at Beir Markt) and I slept until 2pm the next morning, fully clothed from the night before. That Christmas Ale is trouble this year. I still don't feel right.

Not sure why, but the E6th traffic light seems to be a major problem for all modes of transport: BRT, pedestrian, automobile, trolley, bicycle.

Amsterdam for the mix of contemporary and historic architecture, the trams, drugs, etc. Though if Prague were on the list I would have a hard time choosing one over the other. So dark and just a weird place in general.

The buses (BRT Vehicles) are silver. The trolley's are green. I think the poster meant environmentally friendly.

Alright, not looking good for the building at the SW corner of Prospect and E4th. A couple guys from Indepence Excavation were poking their heads around the building during lunch today. This company does demolition work, and didn't some dreg parking lot company purchase this building over the summer with hopes to probably expand their lot at the corner? When the sh!t is this city going to grow a set and stop this from happening? How long will this shit go on?

Man, with the fall colors mixed with the cross section of colors of the homes... Even though I live here, I sometimes forget how bad ass this neighborhood is.

It's Obama. I think I see a w28th in those photos as well.

How is it not "your thing?"

I'm going to take a late lunch to go to the opening, but I wonder why RTA didn't schedule this to happen at 12:00 when thousands of people would be out on lunch. Seems like that would have been a better time to tout the new BRT's.

The highest (crest) of the hills east of the city. I'm younger than you.

Why do you keep saying Ferchill in relation to cleveland? He hasn't done anything of substance here for years.

You are wrong, if you are comparing Cleveland to Detroit. Cleveland has several projects going on right now that are larger, more expensive, and more impactful. Flats East Bank ($550,000,000+) 668 Euclid ($?) East 4th Neighborhood ($?) etc... He is one of my least favorite developers because he tries to make himself look better at the city's expense, which I think everyone sees right through. What has he even developed here to be one of your favorites?