MUD 722 - WINTER 2025
STUDENTS
Elyse Cote, Shweta Chawda
PROFESSOR
Cyrus Peñarroyo
What if infrastructure - a city’s technological lifeline - wasn’t a hidden utility, but a visible stage for collective life?
“Undercurrents” confronts Detroit’s “black-boxed” water systems, buried by disinvestment and prioritized only in crisis - main breaks, shutoffs, flooding. The project reframes greywater, stormwater, blackwater, and potable flows as mediums for collective care, knowledge exchange, and respite. Terraces, amphitheaters, exoskeletal pipes, and vegetation choreograph water along a central adaptive spine, animating gardens, plazas, and everyday rituals.
By slowing urban tempo and resisting tech’s fixation on acceleration, the project positions care, repair, and reciprocity as the true undercurrents of Detroit’s social and ecological networks.