When he was named director of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena asked curators to focus on projects that “improve the quality of the built environment and life and consequently people’s quality of life.” 

At the time, Cynthia Davidson and Monica Ponce de Leon, curators of the U.S. pavilion at the Biennale, were already working on a program that answered Aravena’s call. When the pavilion opens on May 28, it will contain speculative designs by 12 architecture firms for four sites in Detroit. Two are empty lots, one adjacent to the burgeoning community known as Mexicantown and one near the thriving Eastern Market. Two are existing buildings—an abandoned, derelict Packard factory by Albert Kahn and a semi-occupied post office near the riverfront. Davidson and Ponce de Leon chose the four sites in consultation with local leaders and selected the 12 architects out of 253 entries in an open competition. Some of the offices are well established—Greg Lynn FORM of Los Angeles and Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architect of Atlanta—while others are relative unknowns. Two are in Michigan: A(n)Office in Detroit and T+E+A+M in Ann Arbor.