The Future is Unwritten: Ghana Think Tank, The American Riad

The American Riad

The American Riad is an art and housing justice project by Ghana Think Tank that utilizes cross-cultural exchange in order to strengthen community life in the city of Detroit, Michigan. The project was conceptualized by a think tank established in Morocco, which identified that many US problems stem from an architecture that creates social isolation.

The American dream of the single-family home means that neighbors are separated from one other; in contrast, Moroccan architecture invites and creates community. Rather than viewing Muslims and immigrants as a threat to American culture and safety, this project instead looked at how we can adopt elements of Islamic and African Culture to solve this problem in the US. The result was Americans transforming an abandoned street corner in Detroit into an Islamic Riad: communal housing and businesses surrounding an elaborate and beautifully designed courtyard. The American Riad uses public art and creative architecture to form a model of development that links diverse cultures and builds sustainable, resilient communities.

Cultural Ambassadors in Morocco

In 2012, shortly after violence erupted in the Middle East over the YouTube video "The Innocence of Muslims," the US State Department and Bronx Museum of Art selected Ghana Think Tank to work as cultural ambassadors in Morocco. There, they converted a donkey cart into a solar powered media center and tea house, traveling from village to village asking North Africans for help solving American problems.

The issue of social isolation in American communities seemed especially lamentable to rural Moroccans. In contrast, they said, Moroccan architecture creates community.

“You need to make your architecture more like ours–a riad.”

Cross-cultural Exchange

The solution, a long-term art and housing justice project, transforms an abandoned street corner in Detroit into an Islamic Riad: communal housing surrounding an elaborate and beautifully designed courtyard. It is Ghana Think Tank’s longest and most ambitious project to date.

Rather than demonizing Muslims and immigrants as a threat to American culture and safety, this project instead looks at how they can learn from Muslims, and from other cultures.

Stages 1 – 4: Riad, Land Trust, Gardens and The Row

Ghana Think Tank is cognizant that gentrification can happen when neighborhoods are beautified and gain access to new services. To prevent displacement and guarantee that the apartments and businesses will remain affordable to current residents, a land trust is being established. The Detroit Justice Center has awarded the project pro bono legal services in order to establish the land trust that will ensure the residences and businesses surrounding the courtyard are permanently affordable. Although this strategy has been used in other states, it will be the first of its kind in Michigan, and will provide a template for others seeking to maintain affordable housing and avoid displacement from gentrification. Acclaimed Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni is advising on the architecture of the gardens and surrounding buildings.

Islamic Culture in Detroit

The first phase of the community project was completed in September 2019, which included the renovation of a vacant lot and abandoned house into a public sculpture courtyard and a habitable home. Subsequent phases will complete renovation of the 6 businesses and 8 residences into a permanently affordable Land Trust centered on art and lessons from Islamic culture.

Skillshare

Since 2012, The American Riad has linked North End Detroiters with artists from Morocco, Indonesia and Syria for cross-cultural skillshares that apply knowledge from Muslim cultures to the transformational project.

Pictured here are Oakland Avenue Artists’ Coalition member Jide Aje, SUNY Purchase College students, artist Haifa Bint-Kadi, and young Detroiters in the project’s summer camp and youth employment program.

As the Riad was built, neighbors were offered skillsharing in art, home renovation and in setting up their own systems for water filtration and energy collection.

Here, members of the think tanks in Morocco and Indonesia run a wood-working demo at the American Riad, depicting the Arabic word “Iqra” (learn: read, recite).

Stages and images of construction.

An image of the Moroccan-inspired courtyard and architecture.

Community Gathering

The courtyard is a public space for gatherings, workshops, gardening...

...performances...

...and the display of local and international art.

An Art and Housing Justice Project in Detroit

"The community land trust model is the antithesis of gentrification. Rather than development happening to a community, the community shapes and drives development.”
- American Riad Partner and Detroit Justice Center attorney Eric Williams

Rebuilding Detroit

Images of the beautiful Moroccan-inspired courtyard. When the project is complete, it will merge steel arabesques with aged Detroit brick, feature dappled light from delicate Islamic patterns falling across a lush public garden and courtyard, and showcase art by local artists—all built through cross-cultural skillshares and community workshops.

Founded in 2006, Ghana Think Tank is an international network of citizen think tanks living in the so-called “Third World” that solve the problems of people living in the so-called “First World.” The collective’s approach to public art reveals blind spots between otherwise disconnected cultures, critiquing and upending traditional power dynamics between the "developing" and the "developed." This work challenges assumptions about who is “needy,” turning the idea of expertise on its head. To date, think tanks have been established in Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Iran, Syria, Morocco and with a group of incarcerated teenage girls in the US. Art is used to create unlikely partnerships, including across the US and Mexico border, with African refugees seeking asylum in Israel, between the Dutch and former colonies, and in Mitrovica, a symbol of Kosovo’s ethnic divisions.

Through communication, creativity and innovation, the cross-cultural efforts of Ghana Think Tank have led to solving all kinds of problems and improving life in communities all over the world.