PROJECTS
Andrew Masternak - The Kerrytown Film Stock
Jacob Brookhouse - The Allegory
Outside—In
The Movie House in an Interstitial Age
The past two centuries have been marked by rapid change not within a fixed and stable world, but within a world transformable, and transformed. From industrialization to the information age, regional conflicts to world-wars, global trade to global warming, the world has been re-shaped in ways both deliberate and unintentional. The future once seemed so distant. The future is upon us. How do we work on something now when it feels immovable?
The studio will design a center for experimental and arthouse films in Ann Arbor. We’ll work to understand the circumstances which have led us to, and created this time we are in, and speculate on the role of architecture to engage these conditions in a confined, semi-urban site. To do so will require optimism, imagination, pragmatism, and diligence.
Site #3, located at 617 Detroit St. is a relatively compact site on the neighborhood edge of the Kerrytown business district. It has a modest change in topography facing two different streets, each with their own level. Does this make it a site, or sites? Let’s see.
The studio will explore the relationship between interiority, exteriority, and interstitiality through verbal declarations and visual delineations. What has become of the movie theatre experience in an age when one can watch a movie anywhere? What exactly is the role of a building designed to separate us from daily life when our devices can instantly distract us — daily? We can perceive the sudden shifts, but what about the subtle ones? How might we heighten our sensitivity to them? Let’s work on that.