ARCH-4980.1 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer

DIRT, GERMS, AND HEALTH
Improving Our Built Microbial Environments

JUSTIN RUPP

Humans spend more than 90 percent of our time indoors, coming into contact with many microbes through breathing, touching, and interacting with other people. All of the buildings we occupy have controlled indoor climates that have been designed to keep us comfortable, keep us safe, and keep us healthy. We rarely take into account the profound impact the ecosystems we are creating have on our physical and mental health, and how important the microbes on our body and in our buildings are. Architecture needs to adapt from old trends of misophobia and public health, to a new understanding of clean buildings and healthier environments.

The city of Detroit is full of obsolete sites that have been abandoned after the automobile industry left the city. These are abandoned buildings and abandoned lots. Over the past few years more than 80% of Detroit’s public parks have closed due to lack of funds. However, there is currently a resurgence predicted to happen in Detroit within the next ten years of new people moving into the city and taking advantage of the cheap property and rich history and beginning to rebuild.

I am proposing an elementary school in downtown Detroit, located on one of these obsolete sites. The school will incorporate knowledge of our microbial environments, biodiversity, public health, and urban farming into the curriculum through immersing the students into various environments and classrooms. An important element of the project is also including public spaces within the school for the community to participate with the students in urban farming and learning about creating more bio-diverse spaces. The purpose of the project is not to create a single healthy building, but to help children and people in the city understand how to live in and create their own healthier environments for themselves, and redefine how they perceive dirt, cleanliness, germs, and bacteria.