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Center for Fulfillment, Knowledge, and Innovation

Greg Lynn FORM

A technological future for a former industrial plant.


How to deal with an abandoned historical plant and reverse it to more updated functions and techniques? Greg Lynn proposes the Center for Fulfillment, Knowledge and Innovation as a project for the reuse of the historic Packard Plant in Detroit. The short film produced by Framestore to introduce the project compares old and new and shows their cohesion.

The new complex combines a transport hub, industrial park, factory, and university, to transform the former plant in response to accelerated innovation in robotic manufacturing, autonomous transportation, and online retail. The architecture of the new complex prioritizes flow, movement, and processing – an interconnected network of products, people, robots, and ideas.

The historic buildings' first two floors house inventory including an online retail fulfillment center, a food port, an autonomous livery-car depot, and an aerial-drone port. The upper level consists of four corporate research centers and an auditorium/convention center. The entire complex is anchored by two five-story university satellite buildings, connected on the fourth level by a walkway that supports four reconfigurable collaboration spaces that can be moved and docked adjacent to research and conference centers seasonally. Below the research park and above the fulfillment center a 1.7-mile-long logistics-drone superhighway links between the 25 existing elevator cores on the site. This creates an efficient thoroughfare for the intelligent movement of goods, equipment, and materials.

The project is innovative in terms of program, functions and forms, but also for how it was developed. The design in fact evolved through the use of the Microsoft HoloLens and the visualization work of Framestore. Holograms and augmented reality permitted to merge images of reality with virtual views of the project, as well as shot of the the physical model with the CGI ones, for testing the design and better go through its development.

The Center for Fulfillment, Knowledge, and Innovation was exhibited in the 2016 Venice Biennale within the installation "The Architectural Imagination" at the US Pavilion.

Credits

Author: Framestore
Architect: Greg Lynn FORM
Mentioned project: Center for Fulfillment, Knowledge, and Innovation (2016)
Project location: Detroit, USA

USA 2016
Duration: 5'02''