By Sarah F. Cox

Detroit architect Charlie O’Geen is on a mission to make his house float above the ground. I met him when I traveled to Detroit to spend three weeks in a residency program called DFlux in the neighborhood known as No Ham (or North Hamtramck). I intended to research the city’s urban design, and ended up focusing more on community development. This is how I found a pocket of DIY home-owners taking advantage of an artistic community and cheap real estate to turn 1920’s era immigrant homes into modern architectural experiments. Charlie is one of those people.

Sarah F. Cox: Charlie, how much was your house?
Charlie O’Geen: I bought it in mid-August last year for $1,100. With taxes and closing fees the whole thing was $3,300.

And you immediately started taking it apart?
When I bought it most of the windows were boarded up, and it had been unoccupied—a construction company had foreclosed on it. There were no utilities and every room smelled like a different type of cat urine. All the walls were punched through where someone had gone in to steal the copper wiring. But I began by making a site-specific investigation into the materials and found out that they were not worth the time to work with. There was bad carpet, drop ceilings, and wood paneling. So what I wanted to do was get back to the real house by working with the foundation and the frame.

How are you making design decisions?
My goal is to take the design from site specific to site derived. I think that the house can tell you what to do. It was originally built as a temporary immigrant houses for Polish workers around 1922, as were most of the other homes in the neighborhood. Most of them are all are the same, though they have evolved over time. The difference between my house and the neighbors was that they all have basements and my house is up on piers. I’m using that site feature, the stilts, as my starting point. Then, as I was deconstructing, I started to realize that the pier system was abused.

So the design grew out of that?
I decided to make it a “floating house” by leaving it the same height but excavating down to replace the foundation. It was supported on CMU cinderblock and the joints had cracked and failed; the girders on top of them were starting to lean. But I found this all out when I started to take it apart.

Do you live in it yet?
No, but I am hoping to by January. The big step at this point is designing the bathroom and mechanical spaces. I will be installing radiant floors.

You were trained as an architect but you are working without a plan. Why?
I think design programs are all about graphics and translation of the way that the architect thinks. My intention is to work with what I have and I have no idea what it will look like. The only drawings that I make are to communicate with other people.

[Images by Andrew Doak]

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