Rapidly demolishing and erecting new buildings has taken its toll on our planet. The emissions in our atmosphere and the massive piles of rubble filling up our land  have forced the industry to reckon with the consequences of this short term thinking. While architects are responding with a wave of projects which adapt and reuse pre-existing buildings, some buildings are harder to adapt than others. An office building with a wide floor plate, for example, cannot be easily converted into a use that requires natural light and ventilation, dooming it to the landfill before it's even constructed. More resilient buildings however, including many of Detroit’s industrial buildings with their durable masonry and simple floorplates, have proved to re-use incredibly well. This project explores how a building can be designed to be both durable and adaptable so that its future adaptation is already considered before it is even built.

The typology of housing over a workshop is both ancient and contemporary: historic shops and guilds almost always included housing either adjacent or on top, and modern makerspaces are increasingly including housing aloft. Because of the longevity of the program, we saw it as a fantastic opportunity to design a building meant for long term re-use: although the name “makerspace” might be defunct in 100 years, communities of crafts-people living and working together will always exist. This adaptability manifests at four distinct scales of time.

Every few days: craftspeople need the ability to rapidly shape their work areas to specifically suit their needs. Ceramicists need shelving near the kilns to stage the loading of pots, woodturners need the bench grinder by the lathe to quickly sharpen their tools, etc. The pace at which changes might need to be made to the space can be shockingly high. For example receiving large commissions or preparing large quantities of materials for an art fair, makers can become suddenly inundated by lack of storage or space for the overflow. Sometimes something as simple as an abnormally large workpiece or a delivery arriving off schedule can require the whole shop to be re-structured. To alleviate this the walls of the studio bays are perforated brick, the holes in which are sized to allow a conventional 2x4 to fit and act as mounting points for shelving, lighting, or whatever the task at hand demands. 

Every few months: the seasons change and the needs of the residents and larger community change alongside them. The landscape of the site is shaped to gracefully adapt to the different outdoor activities which occur throughout the year. The most prominent seasonal event for craftspeople is the seasonal art fairs in the summer. To accommodate these temporary festivals, brick screen walls are positioned on rows of pavers which allow the quick set up of temporary booths which can easily be dismantled and turned into overflow parking. Furthermore, the sunken outdoor basketball court can be used as an ice skating rink during the winter. 

Every few years: residents move in and out of the homes above their workshop, and inevitably will want to shape the space in which they live. For many, putting some work into an old house when you move in is almost a right of passage. While many renters cannot shape the spaces within their home, we wanted to enable tennants to cater the space to their own needs in a way that was expressed on the exterior of the building. The facade of the building is composed of masonry arches which partially conceal a recessed terrace which acts as a buffer between the exterior city and the interior of the units. Residents are invited to use the space as a patio connected to other units, a private balcony, an enclosed greenhouse or three-seasons room, or as a full extension of their interior living space. This allows the facade of the building to almost breathe as tenants move in and out and redo their balconies over the years.  

Every few decades: the needs of the community change, technology improves, and the city as a whole evolves, they may decide to add additional systems or programming which would be impossible to anticipate at the time of designing. To allow the collective to adapt future programs, parts of the building remain “unfinished”: the top floor of the building is initially constructed as a bare framework of beams and columns, occupied by a communal rooftop bar, solar energy capture system, and gardening plots; The simple structure (alongside the potential to fully build out these floors into interior space) gives space to the future programs. Additionally, the repeated building geometry in the basketball court and landscaping suggest where future construction could take place. 

In order to operate sustainably for extended periods of time the building not only has to perform well in measurable metrics such as energy usage and rainwater collection, but also has to serve as a vibrant part of the local communities and ecosystems. Working with the LEED specifications as our guidelines helped us determine the most effective ways to get the building to perform efficiently and enhance the social and ecological area around it. Through advanced metering, grid harmonization, extensive shading of windows and a geothermal system we were able to achieve a performance Cost Index Target 48.76% below target. While 17.92% of the energy demand is currently met by a solar array on the roof, that amount could easily be doubled with the installation of a secondary array. The building's water use is also reduced through the planting of native species which need little water, the use of advanced low flow appliances with advanced metering, and rainwater collection both in the building for use and on the site for retention. Furthermore, the ecology of the site is greatly enhanced by the diversity of native grasses, flowers, trees, and groundcover which retain water and soil while reducing the heat island effect. We hope that providing open greenspace and a public facing program at ground level and in close proximity to transportation and other city amenities will make the building a vibrant destination for years to come.