Motown Center

The Motown Center constitutes a new building type—a hybrid of museum, entertainment center, and education facility for an important cultural legacy. The proposal is intended to have a very clear and distinctive image—a strong, recognizable iconic presence in the city, befitting the importance of Motown in the history of Detroit.

In part, because of the origins of Motown in a domestic space, the Center is organized much like a large family house. The driveway is termed the Main Drag, a place like no other ever built and an homage to the role that cars played in Detroit’s culture. Covered by a cantilevered canopy, the Main Drag is the Center’s own street, which can be enclosed by a curtain of metallic mesh. A continuous glass front bends inwards towards the main door, which is flanked by a restaurant, cabaret, and club along with the Center’s bookstore. The vestibule—carpeted, upholstered and curtained—softly ramps down towards the lobby, a space domed by an irregular conical shape crowned with an elliptical skylight and leading to the Center Stage. This sequence of spaces creates a continuous public promenade that clearly structures the life of the building.