ZIGGURAT AND FB21 is a site-specific sculptural installation made from 6,201 wooden floor-blocks within Detroit’s abandoned Fisher Body Plant 21. Vacant since the early 1990s, the elements have deteriorated the 650,00-square-foot FB21, turning it into a man-made cave, with stalagmites on the floors and trees growing on the roof. The factory was stripped by scrappers, but thousands of wooden, end-grain floor blocks remained, buckled in organic patterns over years of freezing and thawing. The Ziggurat’s form was inspired by FB21’s concrete-columned architecture—its church-like lighting and mesmerizing vanishing points recalling the power of an Egyptian Hall of Kings. I wanted to ques- tion the idea of a ruin versus a monument, building a ruin within a ruin, and juxtaposing postindustrial ruination with the ancient past. It took about eight months to build, from January to August of 2008, gathering, hauling, and stacking the blocks through three seasons. By September, it was destroyed, when the Environmental Protection Agency took over and cleaned out the hazardous creosote-preserved floor blocks. Five months later, the EPA was gone, and FB21 was again reclaimed by scrappers. Since then, the site has been repeatedly boarded up and torn open, with occasional press declaring a potential renovation into a storage facility, a loft complex, or a music venue, including the latest proposal to transform the beast into an apartment and retail complex by 2025.

ZIGGURAT, EAST, SUMMER

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FB21 SUMMER, FROM MANSUR