The Shepherd Art Park revitalizes a derelict 3.5-acre site in a historic Detroit neighborhood, transforming it into a dynamic cultural and community hub, open and accessible to all. The client requested the transformation of the abandoned and overgrown city block into an arts and cultural campus hosting both fixed and flexible program focused around community and arts. The site itself included several critical constraints, including inaccessible grades, poor drainage, a functional municipal alleyway, and degradation that included building foundation ruins. At the same time, the site’s identity is heavily influenced by the presence of a brick romanesque church, presenting great opportunities to celebrate the community’s history, and requiring an approach that marries the vast scale of the church with the surrounding landscape.

Blending art, play, and public space, the park offers year-round programming, fostering social connections and celebrating the city’s rich heritage. A Tony Hawk-designed skate park, rotating sculpture exhibitions, and the lively outdoor dining experience called “Father Forgive Me” activate the space, inviting both planned and spontaneous interactions. Winding pathways seamlessly weave the park into the surrounding neighborhood, sparking curiosity and engagement.

The project is located in a low income and overlooked neighborhood, so the design provides an inviting and accessible community space that feels authentic to the neighborhood—utilizing materials, planting, and forms that felt fitting to the decay and regrowth found in nearby vacant lots. Circulation creates a sense of discovery within the site, and openness to the neighborhood beyond. The formal identity of the project is inspired by the architectural typology of the church, including a central ‘nave’, side ‘altars’, and an apsoidal geometry characterizing all spaces.

Sustainable material use and native planting are all features of an innovative approach to sustainability. Bricks were salvaged from the church’s nunnery and re-used as paving. Redtwig dogwood was used to define principal program spaces–a plant well-adapted to the local saturated soils, and whose color complements the overall rusty color palette of brick and paving. Wood is salvaged from local trees that were downed during storms. The White Oak benches–a highly durable and native wood–were locally fabricated. Recycled glass pays homage to the church’s stained glass windows is placed in the meditation loop, following the logic of a ROYGBIV color wheel, referencing the identity of the community as an arts community. Walking around the neighborhood, there is a special beauty in broken glass, stones, and brick, presenting an opportunity to celebrate the story of the site, and neighborhood, and lean into the artfulness that is possible through sustainable material re-use.