Wallpaper* Design Awards: Detroit is City of the Year 2026

Detroit looks different these days. Its grand but long-abandoned buildings – vestiges of a bygone era when the automobile was king – have been transformed into galleries and hotels. New glistening towers soar high above the historic skyline. Once blighted neighbourhoods have been redeveloped to keep existing residents while attracting new ones – 12,500 in 2024, according to US census data. There’s a sense of optimism here that’s hard to find anywhere else in the US.

Detroit is City of the Year in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2026

This transformation is emblematic of a new wave of revitalisation sweeping the Motor City, one that stems from the first seeds of scrappy urban renewal that began to emerge here a decade or two ago. Back then, organic farms and replanted urban forests started to crop up on the vacant plots of former row houses. Creatives made good use of disused warehouses and bank buildings, while journalists eagerly chronicled the hardscrabble, bootstrap narrative – perhaps no more so than with the watchmaker Shinola, which marketed itself as a ‘made in America’ brand. (A claim the Federal Trade Commission would later dispute.)

‘When I moved here ten years ago, Detroit’s creative scene was still very raw,’ says French-American culture journalist Margot Guicheteau, who recently released a travel book called Soul of Detroit. ‘It was like a jungle, but in the best way possible. Everyone was talking about their visions for the city. Now they are actually coming to fruition.’

Detroit’s current crop of movers and shakers (artists, architects, designers, gallerists and progressive developers) is taking a more considered approach to urban revitalisation, collectively formulating sustainable, future-proof strategies that other cities with similar conditions could potentially adopt. ‘What we’re doing here, other places will have to do soon as well,’ says Philip Kafka, founder of Prince Concepts, a local developer that’s invested in Detroit’s Core City neighbourhood.

While downtown Detroit has experienced its share of shiny upgrades (notably with Hudson’s, a 1.5m sq ft development designed by SHoP), there’s been substantial growth in the city’s neighbourhoods, too. New York firms Office for Strategy + Design and SO-IL are currently working on Stanton Yards, a cultural complex along the Detroit River, set to open in 2027. And in November 2025, Detroit mayor Mike Duggan announced a plan to transform the Albert Kahn-designed Packard Plant, one of the city’s most notorious urban ruins, into a 28-acre mixed-use site that includes affordable live-work housing, a museum devoted to Detroit’s electronic music scene, and even an indoor skate park.

‘There’s a misconception that the grassroots, DIY approach left the city,’ says Anthony Curis, co-founder of Library Street Collective, the gallery and cultural platform that’s spearheading the Stanton Yards project. ‘It’s very much alive but has shifted, almost exclusively, to the neighbourhoods.’ The city’s status as a Unesco City of Design and events such as Detroit Month of Design are further securing the Motor City’s status as one of the most exciting places to be right now, and there are a number of projects that are putting it back on the map. Among these is the arts centre, The Shepherd.

Central to the rapidly redeveloping Little Village neighbourhood and completed in 2024, this multifaceted cultural campus makes clever use of a stately Romanesque church, its ancillary buildings and extensive grounds. The complex is anchored by an expansive hall for temporary exhibitions, sensitively converted by Brooklyn-based architecture firm Peterson Rich Office, as well as a public library, curated by Asmaa Walton of Black Art Library, and a performing arts theatre.

The campus also includes a rectory-turned-bed and breakfast; a wine bar called Father Forgive Me; a bakery designed by local practice Undecorated; a skate park that Tony Hawk helped imagine; and a sculpture garden showcasing works by prominent Detroit artist Charles McGee. All of the landscaping was carried out by Office for Strategy + Design. The impressive project was developed by Curis and his wife and business partner JJ, who are also the force behind the nearby OMA-designed Lantern complex and the upcoming Stanton Yards.

Core City, an ever-evolving residential and commercial neighbourhood located north-east of the Corktown neighbourhood, is also blossoming. The project, spearheaded by Kafka, is a new kind of real estate development in which existing residents are kept in place while empty plots are in-filled with experimental dwellings; some are self-built by individual homeowners while others are constructed on spec. The Canopy is one such addition. Designed by LA architecture practice EC3, the multifamily complex was inspired by the styles of Mies van der Rohe and Albert Kahn, architects that had a significant impact on Detroit. The cube-shaped structures are clad in renewable materials and feature colourful details like exuberant rooftop murals.

Development company Bedrock has been integral to Detroit’s redevelopment, especially downtown. One of its marquee projects is the transformation of Book Tower – the Renaissance-style landmark skyscraper originally designed in the 1920s – into one of the city’s first mixed-used destinations. Completed in 2022, it comprises restaurants, retail stores, gyms, co-working spaces, condos and the Roost apartment/hotel. The building is a shining example of adaptive reuse architecture, especially at this scale. Bedrock invested $400m into the tower’s transformation, a signal that historic buildings are not just being celebrated but being put to good use; made relevant again.

And of the Big Three car manufacturers, Ford has perhaps been the most invested in the city’s revitalisation. On top of its investments in Corktown and the 30-acre tech and cultural hub Michigan Central, the company is overhauling its headquarters, located in nearby Dearborn, Michigan. Architecture practice Snøhetta is currently designing Ford’s new 2.1m sq ft state-of-the-art Research & Engineering Campus – when it opens at the end of 2027, the paradigm-shifting complex, a fluid composition of interconnecting volumes, courtyards and sloping green roofs, will reflect the forward-looking brand’s stated mission of fostering collaboration, innovation and community.

This article appears in the February 2026 Design Awards Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.