URBAN PARADOX

From the study of the Cold War Fallout shelters and terrorist attack at 9-11, there is a cyclical relationship between architecture and paranoia; the architectural iteration on construction and destruction could create paranoia, and also applicable vice versa. The tension between architecture and paranoia can be presented as a never-ending cyclical relationship, a mutual restriction upon a balancing tendency.

The site for the project is the largest abandoned factory at Detroit of the US. It has certain anxiety, conflict of interest which provides a testing ground to explore the potential of architecture, through construction and demolition, in response to the existing paranoia tension between stakeholders and even lead to certain impact on creating paranoia. Instead of thinking the Packard Plant as a sick, dangerous and unsightly decaying mega structures, my project tries to rethink and celebrate the destruction process as inverted construction, so its paranoiac nature is converted to be creative and inclusive. My project depicts the national and domestic conflicts and turns it into potential for new architecture to re-inhabit the site responding to the paranoiac situations in phases. Scrapping industry and car manufacturing industry, both mutually beneficial and competitive, create a hidden dialogue in the possession of the site, material exchange and manpower competition. In terms of the urban development, the recycling plant becomes a system facilitating destruction and reconstruction being carried on by the new car manufacturing sectors. Detroit, once the world’s traditional automotive center, its rebirth would be paradoxically led by the automobile industry again, but with Chinese capital supported behind.

As there is always coexistence between architecture and paranoia, the architecture is not only about relieving or solving the paranoia. To bear in mind that architecture can create paranoia and the paranoia can lead to architecture again, the potential would be even more provocative.