The Detroit-based Book Depository, designed by Albert Kahn, is a 260,000-SF, four-story building originally constructed in the 1930s. Formerly serving as a post office and Detroit Public Schools storage facility before being purchased by Ford in 2018, it is now part of Ford’s Michigan Central District in the city’s Corktown neighborhood. In 2020, the Dixon-Barton Malow joint venture began work on revitalizing the historic building.
A Significant Renovation
After sitting vacant for 31 years following a large-scale fire, the project focused on getting the aged and weathered structure to a habitable, 21st-century modern compound. Existing stairwells and shafts were infilled with steel and concrete. New openings were cut through existing slabs to make way for new elevators, stair and mechanical shafts, and most notably, the 4,600-sf skylight that creates the building’s signature atrium ambiance. Water intrusion over the decades was so severe that most of the elevated slabs and basement slab-on-grade experienced concrete delamination. From the first floor to the roof, the team had to hammer the degraded concrete until a solid substrate was located, place re-steel, apply a bonding agent, and pour back up to five inches of concrete topping slab in some cases.
An Award-Winning Space for Innovation
The renovated Book Depository now houses machinery shops, labs, mobility studios, exhibition spaces, and a café. The Book Depository’s focus is on providing innovators and entrepreneurs with collaborative spaces to produce solutions and prototypes for the future’s mobility concerns.
The Book Depository went on to earn Best Project honors by ENR Midwest in the Renovation/Restoration industry in 2023.
