The porch is an ideal place for community engagement, offering an architectural element that is simultaneously intimate, familiar, and public. Equally, the porch, with its varied lineage, holds deep significance in African-American history as an element whose development traces back to West Africa and continues to be a marker of black domesticity within the United States. PORCH-313 leverages these qualities of the porch to connect the city of Detroit’s well-established network of co-operatives and collectives while imagining a strategy for addressing the many abandoned lots within the city. Through the project, the porch is reimagined as a public space that bridges the domestic and the communal, creating a network of spaces for community members to exchange services, ideas, and quality time.
PORCH-313
