by: Jaime Castilla Santos

The first step was to develop a map that shows the future landscapes that will exist in Detroit. To make this map it was necessary to collect all the cartographic information and digital mapping in order to understand the real panorama of the current territory.

The map is made by a matrix of 500×500 meters, based on the matrix of “the square mile” already used in other territorial mappings of America.

Each of these “pixels” are classified according to 3 categories that determine the landscape that each place aspires. The categories are: 1- Habitability & Culture, 2- Production & Innovation, 3- Vegetation & Energy.

The purpose of this matrix is to obtain an accurate information about the landscape prevailing in each area.

This cartographic system generates a new planning framework open and dynamic that bets on the diversity of uses and the recovery of the preexistences.

Six (6) types of landscapes are defined for Detroit, these typologies approach the recovery of industrial zones, the reforestation of uninhabitated areas or the improvement of consolidated neighborhoods among others.

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SEARCHING FOR SUGAR LAND by Jaime Castilla Santos

Final Thesis presented at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) in September of 2016. 

This project is part of an extensive and complex research that seeks alternatives to understand and intervene in the reality that Detroit lives today. This city has shrinking since the 1950s and it had produced a unique landscape with more than 105,000 empty lots, 50,000 abandoned houses, and more than 30 square kilometers of underutilized land. 

The main purpose of the project is to reorient Detroit’s future by reconnecting the urban fabric and boosting the city’s own identity through the interaction with its citizens. The project pretends to offer a global intervention in the territory according to the context of emergency and precariousness that suffers.

 View the project intro video HERE