There are no additional plans for the site. There's this office building and its parking garage which occupy the entire site except for the awkward gaps created by, as Gistok put it, putting a square block in a round hole.

I think universal opinion among architects [[architects who care about architecture anyway) would be to use a similar massing as the first national bank building or compuware building across the street, unless there was a compelling reason to do otherwise. The way such a massing would define the urban spaces of campus martius and cadillac square, the way it works with the geometric beaux arts plan of the area, the way it forms a street wall with cadillac tower... it just works and is a straightforward good solution.

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons to not use such a massing, but being too lazy to design a building with diagonal lines is not one of them.


Earlier in the thread some have evoked the "Detroit can't be picky" line. It's true that the local economy and real estate market prevents many things from happening in Detroit, but this building's problems are not a matter of budget, they're a matter of basic professional ability.

If you hire a plumber to install a new toilet, and they flood your house, do you just say "Detroit can't be picky"? If a retirement home hires a dj for an event, and the dj blasts dubstep all night because that's all they know how to do, do you just say "beggars can't be choosers"?