海角视频

Michigan Central Station

Detroit, USA

海角视频 helped the Ford Motor Company to transform Michigan Central Station into a vibrant new innovation district that connects the community to the future of mobility in a 21st Century working environment.

Ford had a vision to create a cultural destination that will help to retain local tech talent and attract technology experts from across the country to Detroit, while also offering public places where Detroiters and visitors to the city will feel welcome.

At the redevelopment鈥檚 heart is the regeneration of an historic, but blighted train station, which will be transformed into public space, offices and hospitality.

Challenge

The company, which has a long heritage in Detroit, envisages the 30-acre campus as a new future-focused innovation hub, serving as a showcase and laboratory for future mobility, 21st Century work environments, and adding more density to the neighborhoods.

海角视频 was engaged to provide integrated engineering services to transform the former Michigan Central Station into a place of inspiration for all.

Michigan Central Station was the main intercity passenger rail depot in Detroit. Built for the Michigan Central Railroad in 1913, it remained open for business until 1988. Its 18-story office tower, with a roof height of 230ft, made it the world鈥檚 tallest rail station when at the time of its construction.

When the final trains departed, for 30 years, the building stood empty and increasingly neglected 鈥� a distinctive stranded asset in the heart of the city.

The design for the adaptive reuse of the structure, led by architects Quinn Evans, reinvents the landmark building and helps provide an authentic platform for future innovation while setting a new standard for inviting public spaces. We were engaged to support the project with specialist consultancy around building services engineering (MEP), daylighting and energy modelling and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

As with all adaptive reuse projects, one of the key challenges for the MEP team was to ensure the new services infrastructure could be successfully and sympathetically retrofitted into the historic fabric. Another key challenge was ensuring the new work spaces were comfortable and conducive to the wellbeing of occupants.

Historically, the building had never included an air conditioning system, so space needed to be found between floors to accommodate this, while CFD and the latest digital energy modelling software would help to ensure the cooling and heating strategy were robust and effective throughout the building. Our daylighting experts also advised on the light levels in the work spaces, with a particular focus on the restoration of an existing concourse-level skylight.

The project is seeking Historic Tax Credits (HTCs) through the National Register of Historic Places, a federal program that allows historic building owners to recoup some of the costs of restoration. All designs developed were required to comply with the Secretary of the Interior鈥檚 Standards.

Alongside the project of transforming the building itself, our infrastructure and planning teams also supported the client with its wider vision to transform the district. Known as Michigan Central, the overall project will encompass a 30-acre, walkable site that will welcome mobility innovators from around the world to develop, test, and launch new urban transportation solutions. With the historic Michigan Central Station as its anchor, 海角视频 was separately commissioned by Ford to develop a comprehensive plan for a 鈥渕obility innovation district鈥�.

The key challenge of this project was balancing Ford鈥檚 vision of a district on the cutting-edge of mobility technology with the real-world needs of the site鈥檚 users, the needs of the broader community, and the market-readiness of mobility and built environment technologies.

Solution

With equity as a fundamental value, we developed a Vision Plan and business case/opportunity framework to guide the overall development and selection of technologies. This was complemented by a technology roadmap and vendor overview for building-specific 鈥�smart city鈥� applications. From there, a Mobility Plan was developed, covering everything from transportation demand management (TDM) policies and modal shift targets to site-specific access and circulation, pick-up/drop-off, parking, micromobility, and logistics strategies.

海角视频 also supported the management of construction timeline pressures, by developing a detailed traffic model using VISSIM and preparing a Traffic Impact Statement (TIS) for municipal approvals. We also developed concept design drawings for streets throughout the district, which could then be advanced to inform the schematic design.

The mobility innovation district will be a thriving mixed-use development with an office, retail, hotel, and R&D community of more than 5,000 people per day. The technologies to be employed by Ford will serve the dual functions of being a practical application of mobility innovation for the site鈥檚 daily users, as well as a research/demonstration and testing grounds for the key R&D tenants that the development will attract.

The adaptive reuse of the station building itself has been carefully considered to celebrate the site鈥檚 heritage, with an eye to its future-looking new role. Contemporary design solutions blend with a preservation of the past to create an inclusive environment encouraging collaboration and placemaking.

Our MEP experts took part in a series of deep dive workshops with the architects, known as design jamborees. These helped to ensure that every potential complication, in terms of the integration of new services into the historic building, could be carefully considered and factored into the design at an early stage.

We developed MEP solutions that delivered flexibility throughout the building, ensuring the infrastructure could be adapted to changing needs.

The historic skylight over the concourse originally had a 鈥渓ight shelf鈥� feature, which defused the sunlight. As part of the regeneration, the team restored this feature as clear glass. This created new thermal comfort challenges, which had to be factored into the air conditioning systems. Our CFD team studied the impact of a clear glass skylight and worked with the design to implement mitigation strategies.

The new Michigan Central district can accommodate approximately 2,500 Ford employees and an additional 2,500 employees of partners and other businesses. The campus will total more than 1.2 million ft虏, with 300,000ft虏 dedicated to a mix of community, retail space, and residential housing.

By utilizing high performance building systems, focused on energy-efficient design tailored to individual spaces, the project is able to reduce operational carbon. From an embodied carbon perspective, the adaptive reuse of the building structure was incredibly advantageous compared to a traditional new construction building.

The efficiency of the energy systems is bolstered by the low window-to-wall ratio of the original architectural design, which when combined with additional new insulation, ensures the highly comfortable workspaces envisioned by our digital energy models. The result is a building that can out-perform a new building energy baseline by approximately 20% in terms of energy consumption.

Value

Michigan Central鈥檚 innovation district connects the community to the future of mobility, 21st Century work environments. The project is supported by a strong partnership with state and local government officials.

Our multidisciplinary team supported the client, working closely with the wider design team to shape the vision for both the regeneration of the station building itself, and the reimagining of this gateway between the Corktown and Southwest neighborhoods.