CLIENT: Bedrock
LOCATION: Detroit, MI
YEAR: 2009
As Executive Architect, MPA collaborated with Bedrock, Design Architects, to design the Stories at 265 Alfred Street. The Stories is located between two renovated Victorian homes that are excellent examples of what the neighborhood looked like 100 years ago. The walk-up structure features 10 apartments, with five floor plans with one or two stories and one or two bedrooms. Open layouts lend light and flexibility to fit the furniture and decor. Modern materials and new-fashioned finishes enhance the space.
The new building uses fiber cement panels that are similar to the historic masonry color, as well as using two side by side asymmetrical pitched roofs to match the scale of the smaller existing homes. The design is a modern reinvention of a stacked flat. The first floor is set at a traditional 3’-6” above grade to match the existing historic porches on the streets, which allowed for two garden levels units below the eight stacked flats. The materials on the exterior evoke the natural color palette of the existing Victorian homes next door.
As a part of the historic Brush Park neighborhood, City Modern is situated in one of the largest residential locations adjacent to downtown Detroit. The area affords access to active social surroundings, from dining to shopping and sports to arts – all within blocks of home. This building was part of the larger development project in the city of Detroit, which created 400 homes across four blocks using a variety of housing typologies: townhomes, carriage houses, and mid-rise apartment buildings.
