An Idea To Build A Tiny Forest In Detroit’s Heart

This prize-winning proposal aims to introduce some wooded tranquility to Detroit’s riverfront. The chorus of the song "Fields," by Detroit-born rapper Danny Brown, does a fine job describing the predominant fauna found in the city’s limits: "Where I lived it was house, field, field / field, field house." And while Campus Martius Park, located in the heart of the downtown business district, has been one of the city’s greatest urban-planning success stories (nabbing the Urban Land Institute’s first-ever "Urban Open Space Award" in 2010), it’s still more of a plaza than a park at heart. So for their proposal for the recent Detroit by Design competition, Hyuntek Yoon, Soobum You, of team atelier WHY, gave downtown Detroit something it’s sorely lacking: trees. A whole forest of them. Their project, The Forest, took first place in the competition. It p...