These 4 Detroit buildings have controversial architecture
The only "supermoon" of 2017 rises over Detroit's Renaissance Center on Sunday, Dec. 3. Video by Dustin Dilworth, D3 Imagery.
The Renaissance Center, designed by architect John Portman, is hardly Detroit's only building to spark controversy with its architecture. Here are some others:
Frank Murphy Hall of Justice
At Gratiot and I-75, the building is Detroit's most prominent example of the Brutalist style, so-named not for its visual impact but from a French word meaning "concrete." With its gray slabs and powerful presence, the courthouse, designed by Eberle M. Smith & Associates, was appreciated perhaps more by other architects than the public at large.
Calvary Baptist Church
At Lafayette and Robert Bradby Drive near Elmwood Cemetery, the church initially looks like no one's idea of a church, with its orange exterior more reminiscent of Howard Johnson's roadside restaurant. But the soaring interior and deceptively simple design by architect Gunnar Birkerts signals a higher spiritual purpose.
At College for Creative Studies, 245 East Kirby, the building strikes many as a Lego building, with individual components stacked atop one another. But the design by architect William Kessler, opened in the mid-'70s, is an artful example of modular architecture, designed to be expanded at will by simply adding more units.
Detroit Institute of Arts
Just across the street from CCS, the Detroit Institute of Arts' most recent expansion, completed in 2007, re-clad the DIA's two wings in marble that supposedly would match that on the original museum building. But the color never matched, and many found the starkly white marble garish against the beautifully weathered original.