Mass Customized Detroit Urban Homesteading (McDUH) Operational Logic

Mass customized Detroit Urban Homesteading (McDUH) is a program by which urban Detroit neighborhood rejuvenation may be encouraged by facilitating autonomy in production of forms, culture, and sustenance. The vehicle by which McDUH operates is through the conversion disused small neighborhood support/service buildings (ie. auto repair garages, et al) into multifunction homesteading edifices that may support and complement community area character, productivity, and education. McDUH recognizes the parallels between the urban homesteading movement and digital fabrication, in that both reinstitute control of production and product in the hands of the end-user. The mass customizable nature of digital fabrication further lends this process of adaptive reuse homesteading as reproducible, pre-conceived ‘kit of parts’ may be developed to respond to existing conditions and facilitate various programmatic uses. Specifically, the McDUH system consists of a template to analyze existing materiality/ formal conditions, determines the ideal corresponding programmatic uses as converted urban homestead components, and assigns the appropriate digitally fabricated supportive typology to accomplish this adaptation.

Succinctly, we provide a program to facilitate Urban Detroit neighborhoods’ increased autonomy in the revival and production of forms, information, and standard of living through the systemic transformation of the disused to the self-generating.