SO-IL To Convert Detroit River Warehouses Into ‘Arts Campus’

New York architecture studios SO-IL and Office of Strategy + Design (OSD) have shared plans to convert a cluster of warehouses at a marina on the Detroit River into multi-purpose art spaces. These spaces will be part of the Stanton Yards development. The team partnered with Anthony & JJ Curis of Detroit’s Library Street Collective to convert four warehouses currently serving as dry dockage into an integrated “arts campus.”

The campus will have flexible interior spaces, in which they will be tailored to any number of performance, art-making, educational, workshop, gallery, and recreational possibilities. This project is part of OSD’s goal to bring a new arts campus to the Stanton Yards marina, which the team described as “the latest in a multisite project supporting the city’s cultural and artistic renaissance.”

The Stanton Yards arts campus will be a new hub designed to welcome a burgeoning arts community into the area, “forming a trio with the Collective’s nearby projects at a revitalized 110-year-old church and a defunct bakery and warehouse space.” OSD has designed a new waterfront building for the marina, which will be turned into green public space.

Meanwhile, SO-IL will be responsible for the structural restorations, which will include a lush courtyard that will connect the arts campus buildings to the street and adjacent marina. The plan includes incorporating a distinctive sloped mesh canopy lining multiple entrance points to the campus from the street and erecting strategic perforation of street-facing structures around the campus to draw visitors into the courtyard. 

This central courtyard will serve as “the beating heart of the campus, supporting community events, art installations, and leisure activities.” Details are scarce, but renders from SO-IL for the Stanton Yards arts campus show new architectural roofs, including a white sawtooth roof at the building entrance. Likewise, polycarbonate panels will replace metal siding at certain junctures to bring in diffuse light to the interior art spaces.

Images courtesy of SO-IL