The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy has selected Michael Van Valkenburgh and David Adjaye as the winners of a $50-million competition to redesign a 22-acre park along the Detroit River. The Van Valkenburgh and Adjaye scheme has as its centerpiece a beach within a cove protected by a jetty that juts diagonally into the waterway. The site is part of the Conservancy’s grand plan for the waterfront west of Belle Isle to the Ambassador Bridge, a five and a half-mile stretch of former factories and rail yards, abandoned over time as Detroit collapsed into bankruptcy in 2013.
Detroit has had a long and complex relationship with its riverfront. Fredrick Law Olmsted was hired by the City in 1880 to design Belle Isle, a 700-acre park in the middle of the Detroit River, towards the east of the city center. His elegant plan was deemed too simple, he resigned in disgust, and only parts were realized. Architects such as Cass Gilbert modified Olmsted’s organic vision into a Beaux-Arts formal garden.
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