Detroit Design 139

New Construction

City Modern Carriage Homes

Reimagining Single Family Living in the Heart of the City

The intimate pedestrian scale of the alley is accentuated by inviting front stoops and planters.

Project Details

  • Location: Brush Park
  • Project Size: 139,630 Sq. Ft.
  • Completion Date: 2020
  • Developer: Bedrock, Hunter Pasteur Homes
  • Architects:
  • Merge Architects

Carved Network

The Brush Park City Modern project explores a reinterpretation of the Duplex and Carriage Home typologies as a catalyst for rapid urban renewal in Detroit. The proposed architecture offers a strategically carved network of pocket outdoor social spaces (e.g. keyhole entry forecourts, embedded courtyards and raised outdoor semi-private pathways) as a new method for organizing and sequencing densely modulated exterior space. These socially dynamic niches are intended to gently blur and dissolve the boundary of the streetscape (sidewalk and street) and the gaps between the units. They animate the street deep into the city block while motivating an interlocking series of new unit types for both housing typologies. These spaces operate as an extended exterior circulation system that weaves both the Carriage Homes and the Duplettes with two additional housing types (by partner architects) as a new means to jump-start this area of the city. By connecting the housing types to one another through the block(s), this new residential prototype creates opportunities for successful micro-communities within each block structure.