Interboro research and design group engages the contemporary city in all its beautiful and chaotic glory.

Partners Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca and Georgeen Theodore find ignored aspects of architecture and ignite the catalysts for change. [Editor's note: Look out for the upcoming exhibition at MoMA that explores a similar thesis.] In one project, Interboro found a “dead mall,” the Dutchess County shopping center in Fishkill, NY. The large structure wasn’t just dead and unoccopied, but being land-banked by the property owner—unused and decaying, a waste of space.

Interboro proposed some small, cheap, and feasible uses of the structure, most of which aren’t very mall-like: a bandshell, flea market, nightclub, beer garden and fitness center. The site becomes urban again, albiet different. The finished proposals, seen below, are simple renderings and diagrams. If this were implemented, wouldn’t it be awesome? And who’s to say the owner couldn’t make the changes permanent?

The continuing Build a Better Burb competition (covered here last week) asks: how does one approach the task of redesigning the suburbs? Interboro, serving on the jury, helped select the finalists, including a mixed-use development, highway clover “stomping,” (connections to rail and parking) and reinventions of box stores, strip malls and parking lots. The modern city is full of structures that need reinvention, or else they will all be dead in the water!

But, look on the bright side, and read on below.

In the Meantime, Life with Landbanking (proposal), Fishkill, New York

From dead malls to problematic lots in Detroit, Interboro proposes life-injections. They are valuable studies, like OMA’s research into shopping or libraries that may lead to some interesting conclusions. For their new ideas, Interboro has been awarded the New Practices Award from the AIA and the Architectural League’s Young Practices award. What will Interboro do next?

Usually, quality architectural space emerges as an end result, though beauty here is in the eye of the beholder (do you think a club in an abandoned mall is cool? If it is a good club, i guess). A more “finished” project, LentSpace, is an art and garden space on a triangular development site in lower Manhattan. The project is attracting adhoc sculture projects and was featured in Bravo’s Work of Art as a testing/battle ground for hip artists.

Lent Space, New York

Lent Space, New York, Featured on Bravo Channel’s Work of Art

Back to Detroit: anyone that has seen 8 Mile recently has seen that Detroit has a housing problem; many lots are abandoned and unwatched. Interboro found an “epilogue” to the familiar narrative of housing abandonment, where residents that stayed essentially spread out (making “blots” or block-lots). “Improve your lot!” is a proposed mechanism in which “blotting” is helped along through interventions. In a way, the expanding lots become a new type of suburb. A sense of ownership (and therefore, quality) is created, and we have a Detroit win. And the car companies are coming back, so that’s good too.

Improve your Lot!, Detroit, U.S.

All of Interboro (Armborst,  D’Oca, Theodore) will be giving a lecture, “Advocacy and Pluralism in Architecture” at the D-Crit department in NYC on September 28th. More info here.

by Jim Wegener

posted in General

tagged AIA, Build a Better Burb, Interboro, land-banking, urban planning, Work of Art

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