Joyride Detroit

JOYRIDE DETROIT is an archive-building project that captures generational stories through conversation, illuminating the city’s buildings, landmarks, and everyday sites of cultural significance. At its core, it frames memory mapping as a practice of archive building and placekeep in, a way of safeguarding lived experience alongside physical space.

It invites the player to cruise a dream-like map of Detroit, guided not by GPS but by radio, with audio fading in and out through static, songs, and community recollections as you pull aside to a site and take note. Sites of memory, reconstructed from photographs, newspaper clippings, and 3D scans, emerge as artifacts that preserve Detroit’s past in this collective digital imagination.

Under the hood, the project is a composite of multiple 3D assets, game engine capabilities in Unreal Engine and built out exhibition intervention that allows users to interface with the project using a steering wheel controller.

The project was launched at the 2025 Detroit Month of Design by support of Design Core Detroit at the Eastern Market After Dark Event.

The project is an ongoing…

Placemaking vs Placekeeping

Placemaking

• Shaping public space for new uses and futures, often driven by design and outside investment.

• Detroit example:

  • Campus Martius Park, once an empty intersection, remade into a lively downtown hub with food, concerts, and an ice rink.

Placekeeping

• Preserving and uplifting what already exists — memory, traditions, and community identity.

• Detroit example:

  • The Heidelberg Project, where artist Tyree Guyton turned his neighborhood into a living artwork, honoring creativity and resilience without erasing local history.