Buildings
Albert Kahn Factory Reopens as Progressive Mixed-Use
Facility
(archrecord.construction.com - 07/26/2006)
By David
Sokol
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The 75,000-square-foot
craneway will be transformed into a sports and performance
venue.
Photo © 2006 Peter DaSilva courtesy Orton Development,
Inc. |
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Aerial photograph
of Ford Point show off the sawtooth skylight monitors
that Albert Kahn designed in 1930.
Photo © Charles C. Benton. |
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The former assembly
plant straddles the waterfront.
Courtesy Orton Development, Inc. |
In August tenants will start taking
occupancy of phase one of a newly redeveloped Ford Assembly
plant in Richmond, California, that was designed by Albert
Kahn in 1930. The 517,000-square-foot National Register building
will contain a city in miniature: residential and office space,
a performance venue, shops, and light industrial uses.
Local firm Orton Development acquired
the building in 2004 from the City of Richmond, which had
taken possession of the structure in 1975. Orton retained
Marcy Wong & Donn Logan Architects to oversee the resurrection
of the building, which had been damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake. Wong says that Kahn’s “practical solutions
for assembly-line mass production,” such as long structural
spans and sawtooth skylight monitors, suit an adaptive reuse
that is “consistent with the original architectural rhythm
of the building¹s structural and fenestration systems.”
Moreover, the waterfront location, which Ford required for
transportation purposes, “means unobstructed, sensational
views of the Bay and San Francisco and Marin County beyond.”
The complex, named Ford Point, also
will be distinguished by the 75,000-square-foot performance
space retrofitted into the factory¹s former craneway—with
one of the machines still intact. Wong says the space will
host arts as well as sports events; Orton expects it to be
completed by the second quarter of 2007.
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