by: Lauren Forgacs, other work

‘Our Southwest Tour’ map was initially created to explore new forms of graphic representation, but quickly turned into a piece that we incorporated into one of our current Southwest Detroit projects, a boba tea shop. As we began the process, we wanted to be intentional about how we blended the history of boba tea into the history of Southwest. In order to enrich our research and gather information to use in future projects, we spent a day on what we call, “Our Southwest Tour.”

This tour was done by other work designers Tian Li and Lauren Forgacs, and the map was digitally hand-drawn and created by Lauren. To begin our tour, we focused on some areas that we intentionally wanted to explore; Bagley, Vernor, and Springwells, in that order. We spent a day taking our time walking through each area, and noted architectural details and specific spots that really stood out to us. We paid attention to repetitive color schemes, murals, patterns, and constructional details. We took lots of photos of each area, and now have a large library of images from Southwest.

Concerning the details of the map itself, the pink line is loosely our path through the spots. Starting from the bottom, there is the Bagley Area. You can see where Lauren drew the pedestrian oriented streetscape, La Gloria Bakery, Xochimilco, and the building across the street that had notable ironwork in the window and on the wall. On the bottom left, there is a house depicted in the neighborhood on Bagley, and it has some of the ornate floral details we saw within the ironwork on the fences in that location. Moving further up the map is the Vernor area. You can see MexicanTown Bakery, and above that the mural with a compass is pointing to South West. On the right, there is Most Holy Redeemer Church, and some students coming out of class. Moving further up, you can see El Imperio taco truck, where Tian and Lauren enjoyed some delicious Birria tacos. To finish the map, on the top left is Sheila’s Bakery, which marked the last area Tian and Lauren explored.