UNLIT
Venice, Italy
2012 Venice Biennale
Keying in to the extensive presence of dark volumes captured throughout Detroit as a result of boarded up windows, Unlit conceptually strives for sublime darkness. Wood, as the common material used to close off a space from elements and intruders is used in this delicate, yet aggressive, inhabitable texture to imply the obstruction of light leaks within an actual space in Detroit. As very thin shards, capable of tracing and thwarting the light, Unlit volumetrically implies a larger presence while simultaneously obscuring our relationship to the domestic implications of the familiar form. Resonating with other immaterial conditions of the space, the work also actively curls and releases in relationship to the humidity of its atmosphere and occupants. Unlit can further be read as a compliment and inverse to the original garage project, Weatherizing and in its translation exists as an imported atmospheric observatory; this time just as easy to alter or vanish as the prevalent darkness.
Unlit is the installation contribution from *Alibi Studio to the Grounds for Detroit exhibit by the 13178 Moran Street collective at the 13th International Architectural Venice Biennale, an exhibition that hosts five experimental architecture installations and a curated show of work by more than ten artists, architects, and writers currently working in and on Detroit. (Salvaged Landscape was also hosted amongst this work.) The project is an invited submission to the 2012 Biennale di Venezia as part of the exhibition, Common Ground, curated by David Chipperfield. In part, the exhibition revisits a collaborative project from 2010, where five architects collectively bought an abandoned single-family house in Detroit for $500 cash at public auction. *Alibi Studio contributed the work Weatherizing to the first house. The house on Moran Street served as a shared substrate within which each practice constructed a distinct project—a full-scale intervention.
Project Credits:
Catie Newell of *Alibi Studio
Project Team:
Grant Weaver *lead Alibi
Lauren Bebry
Katie Schenk
Chuck Newell
Brenna Williams
Will Liow
Lauren Vasey
Thanks and Support:
Venice Biennale
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Monica Ponce de Leon
USA Projects