The Long Ships Passing: A New Vision for Great Lakes Industry

The Great Lakes have long been a critical generator of economic, cultural, and material systems. From the earliest Native American use as migratory routes and sites of spiritual importance, to the European settlers who saw the Lakes as a network for trade and proselytization, the region has always carried a layered significance. Today, however, the region is seen as a symbol of decline - simplified to terms like the “Rustbelt” or through isolated narratives such as the “failure of Detroit.”

This thesis argues against this fragmentation. The Great Lakes region has never functioned as isolated cities, but rather a continuous machine, one in which the success of the single city depends as much on the success of the cities around it. A city like Detroit does not run without the raw materials and goods from upstream, and by the economies that purchase the results downstream.

For the region’s future, this thesis proposes a change from the historic raw - to - refined material production flow, to a model focusing on refined - to - technological and informational processes. This new architecture intervenes not by erasing the scars of industrialism, but by inhabiting these sites - reusing existing infrastructures and incorporating remnants. By inserting new forms into the material history of this landscape both a softer footprint and a richer narrative emerge.

The Great Lakes are not a relic of the past. They are a highly complex and rich system that needs transformation in order to thrive into the future.

“Modern Science, which knows no national boundaries, has thrust into Man’s fallible hands unprecedented power, power in building, power in destroying.”

- Hugh Ferriss