ARTIFACTUAL & URBAN DECAY
OF THE
HISTORY OF HEIDELBERG
Detroit, Michigan was once one of the greatest cities in the world because of the automobile manufacturing industry. Due to a severe economic decline and loss of population much of Detroit fell to ruin. This makes it one of the greatest places to observe urban decay in the United States. Much of the city has been left to rot, but there are parts of it where the course of decay has been altered. The Heidelberg Project is one of these places.
Founded in 1986 by an artist named Tyree Guyton, along with his grandfather, The Heidelberg Project is an outdoor art exhibit in a run-down neighbourhood of urban Detroit. Tyree grew up in this neighbourhood. When he returned to it after years of being away and saw how degraded it had become due to poverty and drugs, he knew he had to do something to revitalize it. The aim of the project is to display how neighbourhoods can be revived through art. Now, after more than 30 years, the project is one of the most visited cultural destinations in Detroit and Guyton has won multiple awards for his successful efforts to help restore hope to the city. He even represented the United States at the at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale (“History”).
“Inevitably, every city has some part of it that is considered to be the bad side of town, a side imagined by many to be dangerous and thus to be avoided at all costs”(O'Brien & Szeman, 2009) . Guyton has taken this stereotype about avoiding the bad side of town and flipped it on its head. Not an easy task considering Detroit does not have a reputation of being a safe city to live in. Now people come from all over to visit the ‘bad side’ of town even though there is still a lot of crime in the area. I believe the thought of this is one of the main reasons people find The Heidelberg Project so appealing, even if it manifests subconsciously.