From Blight to Stage Right: A Damaged House in Detroit’s Future as a Performance Art Space
House Opera | Opera House tells a different tale about Detroit’s vacant properties.
“It’s not a house that can easily be repurposed into a living space that’s safe and comfortable, but what can we do is take away that can make it valuable for the neighborhood, and hopefully the city.”
Mitch McEwen, Principal Architect of House Opera | Opera House
There are 90,000 vacant residential lots in Detroit. That’s one in every four properties in the city. A group of artists and architects are responding by taking a blighted house in southwest Detroit and transforming it into a performance art space called House Opera | Opera House. Mitch McEwen is the principal architect of the project and owner of the property. She spoke with WDET’s Eli Newman about the unlikely genesis of the House Opera.
