Detroit Film Museum

Alex DeLarge: It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.
- A Clockwork Orange

MOFOW: Museum of Film on Water

Detroit’s decaying, post-apocalyptic environment provides an interesting context for the proposed film museum. However, in order to deal effectively with the more appropriate social, cultural, and political forces rather than the mere physical context of the decaying city, this design for a film museum stems from the proposal Decamping Detroit by Charles Waldheim and Marili Santos-Munne.

Waldheim and Munne suggested a four-step proposal of dislocation, erasure, absorption, and infiltration which would decommission the most vacant areas of the city and use those areas for non-residential purposes, such as an Ex-Urban Survival Training Course and a Firefighters Academy/Arson Investigation Center.

The building was designed in the abstract, on a site that was created to embody the characteristics of Detroit. The creation of this site highlighted the heterotopic aspects of film and of the city of Detroit. The building was then located in the Detroit River, and the design was further developed. The location and design of the building allow its occupants to be fully immersed in film in a variety of ways; such as creation, production or viewing.

Ricky Fitts: I was filming this dead bird.
Angela Hayes: Why?
Ricky Fitts: Because it's beautiful.
- American Beauty