Left The upper floors are overlooked by a mezzanine housing training, conference and innovation rooms, with arched windows creating a distinctive backdrop
033
PROJECT 1 WPP, Detroit
Leaning into Detroit’s industrial heritage, as well as its love of Art Deco, Motown music and baseball, WPP’s new home is designed to ooze authenticity and to reappropriate rather than replace an existing space
WORDS BY PAMELA BUXTON
WHEN MEDIA GROUP WPP began its search for a new Detroit home, it knew exactly what it was looking for – a location close to the city’s fast-regenerating downtown, and a large industrial building with inherent character capable of being repurposed to house some 1,700 employees.
It was an exacting brief. Working with design group BDG – one of its own companies – WPP soon settled on the Marquette, a 1905 steel-framed building originally designed to house small manufacturing firms and one of the few of suficient size and character for the repurposing WPP had in mind. After a project delivery and occupation exacerbated by the pandemic, the transformation is complete as staff gradually return to the ofice and start to occupy it in the way it was intended. The Detroit project is BDG’s first North American commission, and is one of a string of new ofices it has created for WPP over the world. All follow the same philosophy of reinventing industrial buildings as creative workplaces, whether a ceramic factory (Milan), car showroom (Lisbon), or telephone exchange (Madrid), in what Macgadie describes as ‘a tangible expression’ of that creativity. For WPP, this provides the chance to create a tailored creative environment for their staff as well as enabling a far more sustainable re-use rather than new build approach. In Detroit, this meant relocating staff from the main ofices in Dearborn on the city fringes into a prime central location close to the Detroit river. The Marquette is a handsome, listed brick warehouse, and BDG was keen to retain and reveal the building’s characterful industrial features and generous floor-to-ceiling heights, rather than cover up signs of age and imperfections with, for example, white plasterboard and suspended ceilings. Such an as-found approach is rather less common in the US ofice market than in the UK, and BDG moved swiftly to ensure that existing promising features such as huge metal fire doors were not disposed of at the onset or covered up.
LEFT: PHIL HUTCHINSON
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149
