Michigan, US | Outsider Architecture
Tyree Guyton grew up in a Detroit that was still a thriving city, and his house was in a growing, middle-class neighborhood. But in 1967 when Tyree was 12 he witnessed the destructive effects of the 1967 Detroit riots, the result of social unrest over discrimination sparked by a police raid on a bar, which left 43 dead and 467 injured.
When Tyree returned to the same neighborhood once again as an adult after serving in the army things had only gotten worse. In his words his neighborhood, and Detroit in general, looked as if “a bomb went off.”
Started in 1986, Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project was his attempt to reclaim an area that had become so run-down and unsafe that people were afraid to walk through the area even during the daytime. Using paint, refuse from the neighborhood, and a small army of local kids, Tyree began transforming abandoned houses into massive works of art.
It has been a difficult road and despite the project having been featured everywhere from Oprah to the Today Show and considered a Detroit landmark, it was twice demolished by the city in 1991 and 1999. Tyree however was undaunted and simply began anew each time. Eventually the Wayne County Circuit Court ruled the Heidelberg Project was protected under the 1st Amendment.
The project occupies the entire block and is made up of some 22 individual art projects. Among the significant are the “Dotty Wotty House,” “Noah’s Ark,” and “Faces in the Hood,” portaits painted on car hoods set into the ground. Today, the project is known throughout the world and receives over 200,000 visitors a year and was elected to represent the United States in the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale.
