Flower House was open to the public for one weekend last October. Then the property was ‘deconstructed’  to create a sustainable flower farm. Visitors explored a house filled with floral carpets, leafy walls and ceilings dripping with vines.

The brainchild of Detroit-based florist Lisa Waud, it was one of many projects to grapple with the challenge of revitalizing a struggling city while respecting its complex history.

“When the visitors are gone and the flowers have wilted, the materials will be the first to make up the composting system at the future flower farm,” Waud writes. “While it may seem wasteful to have used them for a brief, artful weekend, the flowers will have been a part of a story being recounted, told and written. Just like the materials in the structures, the flowers will live on as something new and beautiful.”

Read more – and see more photos – here.

We’re usually excited to see a local landmark in the national media. But for those of us who know and love the Pulaski Skyway, it is sad to see it held up as a model of infrastructure decline. The American Public Radio show Marketplace, aired a story earlier this week about the sorry state of American highways in general, and the Pulaski Skyway in particular.

It should be said that the skyway is probably best loved by those of us who admire its dramatic presence in the landscape from a distance, rather than by the 70,000 who travel on it daily.

Read the Marketplace story and listen to the broadcast here.