Senior Architect Quinn Evans | Ann Arbor, Michigan Stories are often a powerful tool and intangible link of past, present, and future. They speak to the collective cultural memory as well as the personal, and the preservation of which can often leave an influential echo in the minds of those who come long after they have been written. In architecture, stories and narratives can be found in each building and every space within the built and natural landscape in an often visual and tactile form—or in the intentional use of the abstract space; from architectural vernacular, exterior stylistic dialect, and interior design language, to its surrounding context, and the…
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Choreographed by design
From within the renovated walls of a landmark-designated site in the Traverse City State Hospital Historic District, a husband-and-wife-led team of kitchen designers, project managers, interior designers, and craftspeople are continuing a mission established long before relocating their design studio to the former Steward Residence on South Division in Traverse City, Michigan. Initially founded in 2003 as a cabinet supplier in a space on South Garfield Avenue, Kitchen Choreography LLC has since grown into a robust remodeling firm with a team dedicated to realizing well-designed spaces for their clients. Recognized for its commitment to preservation such as in the artful blend of historic and new walls of the 3,500-square-foot, vacant-home-turned-design-studio…
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The urban home
In downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, the renovation of the third floor of a historic building transforms a vacant, open space into two individual residences for its owners. Featuring a collaborative design-and-build team, which includes two businesses local to Kalamazoo, Intersect Studio and Buday’s Home Electronics Simplified, the project comprises the restoration of the building while maintaining its charm, as well as tailoring each unit to meet the needs of its resident with the installation of innovative and modern technology. Intersect Studio is a design firm specializing in strategy, architecture, planning, interior design, and experiential branding in Kalamazoo. On this project, the company paired its services and worked alongside Buday’s Home Electronics…
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Classic reborn
In a former industrial campus along Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis housing one of the largest Coca-Cola bottling factories in the world, a new mixed-use site known as Bottleworks District recently opened and has set down roots as a new hospitality and entertainment epicenter. The district, a nearly $300 million, 12-acre transformative initiative, is the largest private development of its kind in Indiana, and it encompasses the city’s first food hall, a boutique hotel, residential space, and more than 300,000 square-feet in flexible office space and retail space. With phase one of the district’s development completed, the campus now holds some retail and service tenants, an independent movie theater, The Garage…
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Designed for generations
From a collaborative, interactive design approach transforming architecture at the speed of ideas, to its status as a Tribally-Owned, 8(a) and HUBZone certified, and Small Disadvantaged Business, Seven Generations Architecture and Engineering LLC is a unique business in its small hometown of Kalamazoo and state of Michigan. The firm was founded in 2012 by Mno-Bmadsen, the independent, non-gaming investment arm of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, and has since more than tripled in size and expanded into a headquarters in Kalamazoo’s historic River’s Edge District, on the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinabek. So far, the Seven Generations portfolio includes multi-million-dollar contracts in federal, state, municipal, commercial, and…
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The Crosswinds Marsh
Near the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, a collaborative project nearly 25 years-old continues to hold precedent for environmental design and ecological restoration. The Crosswinds Marsh Wetland Interpretive Preserve in New Boston, Michigan, is one of the largest self-sustaining wetland mitigation projects in the United States, and was a collaboration between SmithGroup, a renowned champion for environmental design, and the nearby Wayne County Airport Authority that was completed in 1995. Last year, it received a Landmark Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects and has, to date, naturally attracted around 30 mammal species—including deer, muskrat, and beavers—to its more than 1,000 acres, along with 21 reptile and amphibian species,…
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Timeless estate
Upon approach, the French Chateau-inspired residence in Hinsdale, Illinois captures a certain je ne sais quoi in time. Beyond a set of restored, original 1926 iron gates and stone columns detailed with welcoming, ornamental pineapples, a long drive draws the onlooker down a path lined with statuesque trees to a front courtyard where an approximately 14,500-square-foot estate stands in warm grandeur. There is a commanding romanticism to its winged exterior defined by brick and stone, arched entries, and dramatic rooflines; and a classic take on its transitional interior where English antiques are set against a light palette. Once the site of an estate designed by R. Harold Zook, an early…
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Restoration icon
Since its establishment in 1889, the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago’s Grant Park neighborhood has been an integral piece of the area’s architectural record and community engagement efforts. Many know the theatre for its distinctive original architecture by one of Chicago’s most influential design pair, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, but it is also known for an extensive restorative effort that began in the 1960s and continues today. In July 2019, the League of Historic American Theatres recognized the Auditorium Theatre for its restorative and programmatic achievements thus far, presenting it with the award for 2019 Outstanding Historic Theatre at the LHAT’s National Conference in Philadelphia. “The historic Auditorium stood out…
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Garrick Landsberg, AIA, LEED AP
Garrick Landsberg, AIA, LEED AP, senior architect at Quinn Evans Architects in Detroit, Michigan, had a prolific and inspired, if not circuitous, path into the field of architecture and historic preservation. As a licensed architect, planner, and urban designer, Landsberg has an affinity for urban history and historic architecture—particularly that of Detroit, Michigan—and yet it was a passion courted slowly throughout his personal and professional life. “[Design] is searching for ways to make the world better. It’s the practice of trained practitioners across various disciplines—architecture being one of them—that seeks to employ an approach, skill, and knowledge to identify problems, propose solutions, and really move things into the future,” Landsberg…
