“The Canopy” Residential Complex

Core City sounds industrial, possibly technocratic. The name may even suggest something out of science fiction. It is a neighborhood within the great postindustrial expanse of Detroit, a neighborhood that has recently given rise to a cluster of stylish work/live experiments. In the latest project for Core City by local developer Prince Concepts and architect Edwin Chan of LA-based practice EC3, modernist studios cluster within the broader cluster of recent projects. They negotiate space and light and contextual specificities, opening-up to public access while simultaneously providing a haven for Bohemian community life.

Modernism and modernity have not always been kind to historic Detroit neighborhoods. Ambitious residential projects (most notably, elegant Lafayette Park by Ludwig Hilberseimer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) co-exist in the expansive urban grid with streets of semi-abandoned homesteads and poorly maintained public realm. In these comparatively small projects within Core City, the developer and his carefully curated team of designers are testing certain tenets of Modernism. Unlike what Americans still call The International Style, these new projects in Detroit are as much social and communal as they are formal.

This sociability factor is an unexpected discovery for contemporary American visitors, especially for those cognizant of complex planning, legal, and funding regulations. Chan’s first project for Prince Concepts, True North, customized a set of metal Quonset huts, using lightweight translucent panels to bathe the interiors in natural light. A subsequent Prince Concepts project, The Caterpillar, was designed by Detroit-based Ishtiaq Rafiuddin and it places all units within one long, extruded metal vault punctuated by protruding cubic windows. A central hall, painted vivid orange, cuts through the building and down into a small cellar for storage.

That permeability across the urban grain and that tactical use of...

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