22

CREEP
Editor
Molly Redigan

Business Manager
Steven Fournier

Staf
Nicole Fricke
Jamie Georges
Jeremy Johnson
Hayden Juergens
Jeremy Mizak
Riley Rinnan
Indri Shehu

Faculty Advisors
Professor Tadd Heidgerken
Professor Noah Resnick
Cover Images: Shanghai No. 13 by Lu Xinjian
(www.xinjianlu.com)

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University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture
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Copyright © 2016 by Dichotomy | University of Detroit Mercy
All rights reserved. No part of this issue may be reproduced in any form or by any means,
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and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from Dichotomy.
ISSN # 0276-5748
 006 Editors’ NotE

008 INTRODUCTION

010
Robert Schmidt III: ACCELERATED CREEP(ING)

038
Ivo Pekec and Fereshteh Assaczadeh Sheikhjani: SUBERSIVE TEHRAN

052
Charles Vega: THE FLEETING THOUGHTS OF WILDNESS

064
Toshiki Hirano: INTERIVEW WITH JESSE REISER AND NANAKO UMEMOTO

078
Thomas Gaudin: MEDITATIONS ON PROGRAMMED DETERIORATION

094
Paul Golisz: THIS LAND IS NOT YOUR LAND

104
Dan Kinkead: IMPERCEPTIBILITY AND THE ARCHITECTURAL
PROCESS OF RECOVERY
128
WALKING THE CREEP AWAY: A FEW STEPS TOWARDS
FAMILIAR SHANGHI: Sensual City Studio

144
SLOUCHING TOWARDS [...]: Florence Twu

158
PUBLIC TOLIETS IN THE CITY OF LONDON: THE UNSEEN PUBLIC
SPACE: A DARKSIDE BENEATH THE EVERYDAY STREET: Ashley Ball

168
ASK THE NEIGHBORS: Erin Kelly

178
STAINS OF BEAUTY: Ross T. Smith

192
AND NOW WE SEE THAT WE ARE STARS: NOTES ON PAOLO SOLERI
IN AMERICAN DESERTA: Kristen Gallerneaux

216
UDM SOA NEWS
'Elephant', photo by Andy Richards, 2013
 introduction
Urban Intermediaries

When narrating urban history—telling stories of social and material change—we often
reference precipitous events. A city is transformed by revolution, for example, or by war
or a technological breakthrough. A political movement is galvanized by an acute moment
of injustice. A district is reshaped through rapid demolition and redevelopment. But what
happens between these momentous times and spaces? We don’t know, generally. In this
vast intermediary, life proceeds unnoticed.

There is another way to think about change. This volume of Dichotomy shows that in the
long view, the slow creep of anonymous events really does add up. Vegetation grows,
metals rust, communities form, and material fragments of the past endure and take
on new meaning. Almost imperceptibly, space is made and remade. Attending to these
processes, and their material effects, the authors suggest an alternative mode of urban
study—one marked by tactile immediacy, the freedom of the unseen, and the experience
of time passing.

The essays collected here avoid the main streets. In London, we travel underground and
through the city’s Victorian-era comfort stations. In Shanghai, we step into an unknown
and foreboding neighborhood. In Tehran, we seek spaces for covert assembly. Possibilities
emerge beyond the gaze of state and corporate surveillance. We observe wilds and farms
as they proliferate within American cities. We relect on the space of dreams, and on
mortality and remembrance. Collectively, Creep evokes the entwined lives and deaths of
buildings, neighborhoods, ideals, lora and fauna, and our bodies.

Tracing urban change on cracking walls, in the artifacts of bygone utopias, and among
lourishing Trees of Heaven seems to suggest an encounter with the natural world and its
processes. Like the features of a Picturesque garden, however, these scenes are as artiicial
as they are alluring. Each site is shaped by economic and social (i.e. human) life, and each
indexes the movement of capital and the politics of urban ecologies. The vacant and
overgrown houses of Chongquing, China, we learn, only appear abandoned. They are
securely held as real estate investments by their absent owners.The world looks different
after spending time in the company of these authors. The intermediaries of space and
time, where change happens slowly, come into view. The sheen of historical abstraction
falls off of things, and dents, stains, and scratches become visible everywhere. A bus
passes a construction site, and winter salt covers everything. All around, seen and unseen,
people are working, and it is clear to me that their efforts—our efforts—are making their
mark.
Michael McCulloch
University of Michigan