Marchand & Meffre. The Ruins of Detroit

El ocaso de toda una gran ciudad en pleno corazón del imperio estadounidense. Un antiguo símbolo de su poderío industrial y del “sueño americano” donde hoy, sin embargo, se venden viviendas por el precio simbólico de un dólar, ya que nadie quiere habitar el inhóspito silencio de unos barrios abandonados que no tienen electricidad, ni agua, ni policía, ni escuelas. Porciones enteras de la ciudad han muerto. Otras están agonizando. Otras sobreviven, pero lo hacen rodeadas de un creciente marasmo de solares vacíos y calles abandonadas. Al igual que la calavera de Hamlet, el pulido esqueleto de Detroit nos mira con la sonrisa sardónica de los muertos, como queriendo decir “no os lo toméis a mal, amigos, ¡la economía de mercado es así!”(...)

Fort Shelby Hotel

Ballroom, American Hotel

Former Unitarian Church

William Livingstone House

Rich-Dex Apartments

Classroom, St Margaret Mary School

East Methodist Church

Biology classroom, Wilbur Wright High School

Packard Motors Plant

St Christopher House, ex-Public Library

Atrium, Farwell Building

Bagley-Clifford Office of the National Bank of Detroit

Fisher Body 21 Plant

Jane Cooper Elementary School, Spring 2008

Jane Cooper Elementary School, Spring 2009

Michigan Central Station

United Artists Theater

Vanity Ballroom

Woodward Avenue

18th floor dentist cabinet, David Broderick Tower

Donovan Building

(...)El barco se ha hundido. Esto debería producir una profunda reflexión. Fue la cuarta mayor ciudad de los Estados Unidos y, si sucedió allí, podría suceder en cualquier parte. Porque lo que la caída de Detroit ha demostrado es que una ciudad no es el conjunto sus edificios, ni de sus infraestructuras, ni de sus instituciones. Una ciudad es su gente. Si la gente se marcha, la ciudad muere. Y la gente se marcha cuando no tiene trabajo. ¿Inevitable? Quién sabe. ¿Triste? Desde luego. El Titanic se hunde, queda para la opinión de cada cual ponerle nombre al iceberg. Jot Down. Detroit. Asi se hundio el titanic del capitalismo estadounidense

©Marchand & Meffre
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At the end of the XIXth Century, mankind was about to fulfill an old dream. The idea of a fast and autonomous means of displacement was slowly becoming a reality for engineers all over the world. Thanks to its ideal location on the Great Lakes Basin, the city of Detroit was about to generate its own industrial revolution. Visionary engineers and entrepreneurs flocked to its borders.

In 1913, up-and-coming car manufacturer Henry Ford perfected the first large-scale assembly line. Within few years, Detroit was about to become the world capital of automobile and the cradle of modern mass-production. For the first time of history, affluence was within the reach of the mass of people. Monumental skyscapers and fancy neighborhoods put the city’s wealth on display. Detroit became the dazzling beacon of the American Dream. Thousands of migrants came to find a job. By the 50's, its population rose to almost 2 million people. Detroit became the 4th largest city in the United States.

The automobile moved people faster and farther. Roads, freeways and parking lots forever reshaped the landscape. At the beginning of the 50's, plants were relocated in Detroit's periphery. The white middle-class began to leave the inner city and settled in new mass-produced suburban towns. Highways frayed the urban fabric. Deindustrialization and segregation increased. In 1967, social tensions exploded into one of the most violent urban riots in American history. The population exodus accelerated and whole neighbourhoods began to vanish. Outdated downtown buildings emptied. Within fifty years Detroit lost more than half of its population.

Detroit, industrial capital of the XXth Century, played a fundamental role shaping the modern world. The logic that created the city also destroyed it. Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city’s ruins are not isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural component of the landscape. Detroit presents all archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of mummification. Its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great Empire. 

This work is thus the result of a five-year collaboration started in 2005.