I wrote it up for Architect Magazine:
For the firm's first-ever project in Detroit, SHoP Architects is aiming for nothing less than a Rockefeller Center for the Motor City. Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert is giving the New York team the opportunity to build just that for an historic two-acre downtown site on Woodward Avenue.
“We’re interested in making a building that’s both a catalyst for Detroit’s revival and an iconic addition to the cityscape,” said SHoP principal Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA. “We want it to be a big civic presence.”
Besting top-level firms in a global competition, SHoP was hired by Rock Ventures, part of Gilbert’s family of companies and a major engine for reshaping Detroit. Rock Ventures owns or controls more than 8 million square feet in forty downtown Detroit properties and has invested more than $1.3 billion in developing them. For the mixed-use project, SHoP Architects is partnering with Detroit’s Hamilton Anderson Associates (HAA), whose past projects in the city including the North Terminal at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the Wayne State University Welcome Center, and the Detroit School of Arts. Jeff Cohen, CEO of the real estate arm of Rock Ventures, celebrated the two firms for being “known urban catalysts.”
In this site, Pasquarelli says, he sees an echo of the Rockefeller Center—how it was built during the Depression but intended as a “grand civic gesture,” a signature gift to a city during hard times that promises a vibrant urban life in the future.
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