Pavilions

We built the first pavilion on an empty lot on Blackstone Street in May 2020. Recognizing how much we missed seeing each other during the pandemic as well as the needs for points of contact for education and healing, we built another. Getting offline and outdoors as a learning experience, re-connecting, slowly, to the broader world through events or just a place to hang out, we essentially built porches without houses.

This first of our structures began building a series of 4 x 8 platforms across the street. We had envisioned a stage with a covering. We called them Outdoor Classrooms at first because that is what we needed a couple of months into the Covid-19 spring of 2020.

We left the roof on this first pavilion open to the sky to appreciate the graceful oak tree that shades us with its leaves spring through fall.

Among the challenges was to design a recognizable structure that would be fully open and functional 24/7 and site responsive. The largest at 900 square feet/ 90 square meters is our most ambitious, and most widely used by everything from day camps to City of Detroit mayoral debates.

Today, Neighbors’ Pavilions, is a network of 5 publicly accessible structures in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit.  Our neighborhood has little visible retail activity. On blocks where few houses now stand there once were 55 where neighbors sat out on their front porches, greeting passers-by and watching out over one another. 

Each of the wood framed structures have been built by our Brightmoor youth builders and friends.  Their tripartite roof constructions allow for both large and small group gatherings, open to the public in every way, visually and spatially. The open construction of the walls allows physical stability while keeping site lines open for safety and sociability.  Without the need to schedule use, and no fee to pay unlike city or private park picnic shelters, the pavilions have been used for everything from dinner churches, to jazzercise, day camps, debates and picnics.  These cooperative creations subvert external narratives of the area that are all too often focused on abandonment and decline, by building open structures within a Brightmoor ethos of shared and cared for spaces. 

Neighbors Pavilions. Designed by Nick Tobier, lead builder Patrick Schrock. PORCH @ the 2025 Venice Biennial of Architecture US Pavilion construction: Walt Swanson, Nick Tobier, Jayshawn Young.

Crew leaders:

Mike Reid, Patrick Schrock, Walt Swanson