The Detroit Collaborative Design Center was recently awarded a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a project entitled "PlayHouse: An Exterior Urban Community Theatre," located at the Heidelberg Project on the east side of Detroit.

Rendering of proposed PlayHouse.

The intent of this project is to work with neighborhood stakeholders in the design and fabrication of a theater that will become an artistic and cultural centerpiece of the surrounding community. The Playhouse will be created within an existing vacant house, which will be partially renovated to accommodate the theater.

In addition to designing PlayHouse, the grant money will be used toward designing and implementing two community participatory workshops that define its content; and developing a series of three temporary installations within the existing house that introduce the community to the house's new use.

According to Dan Pitera, associate professor and Design Center director, this project is not the Design Center's first act of this kind.

"To further understand PlayHouse, it is important to view it as an extension of a larger citywide project initiated by the Design Center titled 'FireBreak: Architecture and Community Agitation,'" says Pitera. "We assert that as designers, we must be concerned with the built environment and not just with building buildings."

Since 2001, as part of its mission, the Design Center, with community residents and artists, has coordinated and initiated artistic/architectural installations within several burned houses throughout the city of Detroit. But they were temporary and were usually demolished by the City due to the attention they attracted. Neither the Design Center nor the community saw this as a negative outcome.

Detroit residents have been trying to have these burned houses demolished for years. Usually a few weeks after a FireBreak event, the City would demolish not only the house where the installation occurred. They also demolished the other burned houses throughout the area. The residents then turn the new vacant land into community gardens or an alternative neighborhood public space. FireBreak is meant to empower residents to control the aesthetics of their neighborhoods.

Most of the houses that have been destroyed through the FireBreak process were far from salvageable. There are many other burned houses on the demolition list which could be altered or transformed into other creative uses that reach beyond the single family home for long-term use like PlayHouse or with the intent of seeing the houses eventually demolished.