Lilly Saniel-Banrey

Designer of many things. Sowing joy and wellbeing into the details of everyday life. Currently at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. See a full scope of work including architecture, graphics, objects, and documents. Or just see my current projects.

Aretha Franklin Arts High School


 Proposed 2018
Detroit, MI

Ohio State University
Studio by Stephen Turk


 The Aretha Franklin Arts School, in the heart of Detroit, celebrates and expands upon the city’s grand musical history as a new school typology and community arts center. The project explores the definition of “program” within the academic setting as intentionally fluid and borderless. Learning happens between the seams of the classrooms, and the open concept of the school promotes connection through seemingly unlimited open spaces. Both students and community members melt together as one through the continuous ramp system winding its way through the floors from the ground entrance to the balcony levels of the auditorium. Between the starting point and the destination, the ramp melts and reforms within the floors as an active participant in space making. As the circulatory system expands, it allows for spaces of impromptu performance, or break out spaces. As it condenses, the system works in a utilitarian fashion and provides views to larger gathering areas.


The diagram pulls from two seminal illustrations, Life Magazine’s “Theorem 1909” and OMA’s Parc de la Villette competition entry. Both synthesized and interpreted by Rem Koolhaus, the two illustrations create a conversation between the fluidity of program and a new typology of ground manipulation. Their blending unveils methodolgies of building prgoram and passage within the context of the educational system.