For the negative connotation that should accompany the phrase ‘sites of decline,’ one can’t help but be taken aback at the polemical playfulness through which the subject is interpreted. The curation of Ampersand Volume Six thrusts ‘decline first-responders’ into one another, along with their stories, contexts, and agendas, concurrently reassessing the topic of decline, and detaching common tropes associated with it. Decline’s siblings – degradation, disaster, abandonment, and contamination – all make cameos throughout the volume.

 

There are several legitimate arguments as to why decline is so pervasive as a design question. Rather than approach the topic with objectifying criticism, blinding conviction, or any one perspective in between, Sites of Decline positions these projects as a collection, eroding connotations and accepted methodologies that accompany the word. One need not look very far to identify the complementary relationship between urban abnormalities and the firing of polemical synapses within architecture.

 

If there is one common thread underlying the works collected, it would be the unabashed freedom of movement granted by open-ended contexts; constraints are voluntarily tightened as restraints are removed. Although history plays a crucial role, fantasy, fiction, and recreation are added to the design recipe in quantities that are perhaps less palatable in real, live, built environments. Abandoned remnants of the past are dug up from the ground at every opportunity; revealing unused toys, forgotten relics, distant memories, and outdated tools, many of which have since been ex-communicated from the contemporary, sanitized metropolis. There are however, momentary signs the culture of newness is swaying in the opposite direction – soon, visits to Fredrik Law Olmsted’s “lungs for the city” will be surpassed by a much more mutant 2,200 acres of Fresh Kills;  a remediated landfill where new ground sits atop society’s discarded objects.

 

Maybe Ampersand’s proximity to Detroit is what precipitated an audit of decline. Everyone who passes through Taubman College visits the city; we photograph it, we walk through it, we discuss it, and sometimes place fictitious buildings as a means to somehow contribute to larger questions of economies, ecologies, and urbanism. The resulting discourses, however, seldom create unified theorems. Instead, involved parties usually leave with stronger conviction of what to build, where to build, and how to build, which leaves us back where we started.

 

Thus, after what seems like eons of shocking imagery, documentaries, interventions, augmentations, and preservations, it appeared as though the topic had grown stale.

 

The expansive breath of responses [and not solutions] collected in Ampersand Volume Six: Sites of Decline suggests the topic can, and will yield work that is provocative, relevant, and fun.

 

Cheers,

 

David M de Cespedes

Nathan Mattson

Jessica Letaw

Mike Howard

Paul McBride