Designing Justice + Designing Spaces

Client:

Allied Media Projects (AMP)

Scope Of Work

Located at the intersection of Grand River Ave and 15th Street in Detroit’s Core City neighborhood, the Love Building is a classic brick warehouse, covered with beautiful murals that reference love and community. This 4-story, 28,000-square-foot building was purchased by Detroit-based but nationally-recognized nonprofit Allied Media Projects (AMP), which hired DJDS to work with local architects-of-record Centric Design to conduct a master planning process for adaptive reuse of the building and site. 

DJDS worked with AMP and four of AMP’s partners — Detroit Justice Center, Detroit Community Technology Project, Detroit Narrative Agency, and Detroit Disability Power — to redesign the historic building. DJDS held workshops to help the organizations visualize the new look and feel of the exterior and interior spaces for the building, as well as an expanded vision for a campus spread across the adjacent parcels. DJDS brought in global leaders in engineering Arup, as well as Landscape Designer Azzurra Cox, to support the creation of several aesthetic designs and financial models for acquiring the capital to build the vision.

The repurposed building, which includes office space for the five partner organizations, will be a nonprofit hub supporting over 100 social activist media organizations.  The building will also contain low-cost studio space, gallery space, health and wellness tenants, and a food hub that will be visible along Grand River Avenue. The Love Building will bring all of these uses under one roof to activate the power of place as a force for justice, transformation, healing, and liberation. In doing so, it will also be the catalyst for a larger vision along one of Detroit’s four major arteries — The Love Campus.

Construction broke ground on this project in late 2020.