Detroit Public Theatre / Dash Marshall

After operating out of borrowed space for a handful of years, Detroit Public Theatre expanded their operations by occupying a full building in the Midtown neighborhood. We renovated the structure from front to back while shifting its use from an automotive repair facility to a highly flexible black box theatre seating up to 200 people.

The original structure was a humble little thing, mostly ignored for the hundred or so years of its life before our adaptive reuse renovation. Though the building is anonymous, we turned the original truss work into a focal point and pulled the interior renovations down away from the ceiling to expose them throughout. While the design of the renovation enabled the Theatre to secure state and federal historic tax credits, the design of the space is unabashedly contemporary.

The building is organized into three stripes. Front of house includes bar, ticket office, and a generous lobby that can double as a small performance venue. The black box occupies the center of the building. Beyond that, a compact back of house area includes green room, dressing rooms, a mezzanine, and even a micro shop space.

Axonometric diagram of DPT showing how the building is comprised of two dense cores, between which sits the void of the blackbox theatre

View from backstage to the theatre and beyond to the lobby

Orange staircase leads up to the mezzanine

We snuck an unanticipated mezzanine into the building to make room for extra dressing, rehearsal, and storage space

Read more about this project in Urbanize and Dezeen.