Interrobang was a temporary public event staged on the rooftop of Detroit’s Packard Automotive Plant, a site widely known for its dereliction and, at the time, pending auction. The project invited visitors into a space typically encountered only at a distance, using direct occupation to open a discussion about the site’s possible futures.
For a brief period, the Packard Plant was reframed as public space. Given the site’s scale and instability, access had long been limited. The intervention cleared a controlled path through the debris, guiding visitors into the building and up to a rooftop installation along East Grand Boulevard. There, a temporary gallery presented an interactive exhibition, including a sixteen-foot architectural model mapping the condition of each parcel across the forty-acre complex. A central seating area supported informal gatherings at multiple scales.
The project’s title reflects the dual response elicited by the site—astonishment and inquiry. Rather than aestheticizing ruin, Interrobang proposed that public engagement and minimal design interventions could reintroduce transparency, access, and collective imagination to a site emblematic of urban disinvestment.
2013
Packard Automotive Plant, Detroit, Michigan
Scale:
20,000 SF
Support:
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Principals:
Anya Sirota, Jean Louis Farges
Research & Production:
Gorham Bird, James Chesnut, Razieh Ghorbani, Erika Lindsay, William Martin, Hannah Hunt Moeller, Catharine Pyenson, Christopher Reznich
Catalogue:
Interrobang Packard Automotive Plant