Taubman College Detroit Unreal Estate Agency, featuring the work of Roddier and Herscher, exhibits
in São Paulo Architecture Biennial
This year’s São Paulo Architecture Biennial, dedicated to the theme “In Project,” questions the meaning of the architectural project in the city and takes an experimental attitude towards the “place” of design in the city. The Observatory of the Biennale aims to compile, articulate, and democratize instruments that foster the transformation of the city, point out strategies to rethink the contemporary metropolis, and open debate about initiatives that target urban transformation. The work of the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency is featured in the Observatory.
Co-founded by Associate Professors Mireille Roddier and Andrew Herscher, the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency functioned between 2007 and 2011 as an open-access platform forresearch on the cultural, social, and political possibilities that ensue from urban crisis. Against the notion of Detroit as a city that had fallen apart, emptied out, disappeared, and/or shrunk, the Agency explored the city as a new sort of urban formation that only appeared depleted, voided, or negated through the lenses of conventional architecture and urbanism. A series of publications produced by the Agency and its members, including The Atlas of Love and Hate, The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit, and How to Recuperate an Urban Crisis, will be included in its exhibition.
