Archinect - News

SO – IL and OSD to overhaul Detroit marina for new waterfront district

2024-04-30T11:45:00-04:00

SO – IL and OSD have designed a new waterfront district for Detroit’s Little Village. The marina overhaul, named Stanton Yards, will see the existing storage and service-based site transformed into a 13-acre cultural destination with 80,000 square feet of commercial and creative space, 85 boat slips, and waterfront parks.

Image credit: bloomimages

SO – IL will lead the adaptive reuse of four existing pre-war industrial buildings, which historically housed a former theater, marina showrooms, service ships, and a navy shipyard used during World War II. Select demolition and the addition of “unifying elements and upgrades to accessibility” will create a campus for arts organizations, retail, artist studios, and hospitality.

Image credit: bloomimages

“The ethos that 'new ideas must use old buildings' guides our transformation of Stanton Yards into a thriving, multifaceted community,” said Florian Idenburg, Co-founding Principal of SO – IL, about the scheme. “Our design ingrains four histo...

Peterson Rich Office transforms former church into an inviting new cultural center in Detroit's East Village

2024-03-12T18:18:00-04:00

The adaptive reuse design for the Shepherd Gallery and Art Center inside the new Little Village in Detroit has been revealed ahead of its public opening on May 18th.

The project from Peterson Rich Office (PRO) transformed a 110-year-old former church into a new cultural center for the local Library Street Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to presenting art in the city's revitalized heritage spaces. It was executed at 16,000 square feet and culminates in two new galleries with a small library, classrooms, and workshop included for local community endeavors.

View of the Charles McGee Legacy Park and the Shepherd. Photo by Jason Keen. Courtesy of Library Street Collective.

In terms of its interior redesign, the architects chose to place an exhibition area in the transept mezzanine while making the altar below into another gallery open for performance and public gatherings. The church's other transept now houses a curated Little Village Arts Library space from Asmaa Walton. A landscaped...

NYC will convert JFK Hilton hotel into supportive housing

2023-12-28T13:44:00-05:00

A plan to transform the former Hilton Hotel at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City into supportive housing has been announced as the inaugural effort of the important new Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA) program by Mayor Eric Adams.

Aufgang Architects will be in charge of overhauling the 350-room hotel into the renamed Baisley Pond Park Residences, a 318-unit residential development aimed at low-income and formerly homeless individuals with rents ranging between $784 per month for studios to $1,493 for two-bedroom apartments. They say their work will be completed in just 21 months thanks to the hotel’s compatible layout, which allows for a minimally invasive slate of amendments to its internal wall structures.

The result will be a life-changing space for residents, complete with all-electric heating and cooling systems, multiple community/computer rooms, space for the RiseBoro Community Partnership’s on-site support staff, a kitchen serviced by the ...

OSD’s new South Cato Springs development provides nurturing space for neurodiverse adults in Arkansas

2023-06-28T18:57:00-04:00

A new neighborhood-scale development from OSD aimed at enhancing the lives of neurodiverse adults has broken ground outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas following a special ceremony held this week with the firm and its client, a local nonprofit organization called SLS Community.

Their master plan for a mixed-use and mixed-income tract called South Cato Springs will eventually endow the region with a workforce housing micro village that also features dedicated space for a new center for the University of Arkansas Medical School, recreation, and agricultural areas all surrounding a central town square on a plot located near Kessler Mountain Regional Park.

Image courtesy OSD

The firm says it will become an example of a concept it calls “mindful urbanism,” offering itself to the community as both an empowering care space and elevating pedestrianism that is built from and deeply rooted in the rich natural landscape surrounding its idyllic 230-acre site.

Image courtesy OSD

This objective will ...

OSD and Polk Stanley Wilcox selected to design the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Arkansas

2022-07-13T13:42:00-04:00

The healing power of nature is a universal human experience and has been espoused throughout history in the Gospel of John, by the Ancient Greek philosopher Hippocrates, and in several key texts of eastern and new age religions. It is one of the guiding principles behind the architecture of Islamic hospital designs dating to the 12th century and will serve as the key to New York-based multidisciplinary studio OSD’s landscape design for the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Scheduled to open in the fall of 2025, pending the new school’s accreditation, the campus is to be connected to the currently under-construction Whole Health Institute building from Marlon Blackwell and the nearby Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which was also designed (in unison with Safdie Architects) around an elevating naturalistic experience.

Image by OSD and Polk Stanley Wilcox

OSD will work with Little Rock-based lead architects Polk Stanley Wilcox to realize philanthro...