The restoration and preservation of the Ford Assembly Building on the San Francisco Bay waterfront, saved an historic architectural icon from the wrecking ball, and converted a long-vacant auto plant into a current-day model of urban revitalization and sustainability. The 525,000 square foot building had been designed by Albert Kahn for Henry Ford, and constructed in 1931. Following the facility’s initial car factory function, the Ford Building had many incarnations, including the famous World War II tank factory “manned” by Rosie-the-Riveters. In 1989, the Loma Prieta Earthquake’s devastation of the structure rendered it dangerous and unusable. Finding a way to revive the magnificent but crumbling 500,000 square foot industrial hulk was challenging; multiple attempts had failed to create a financially viable way to adaptively reuse the building, while adhering to the preservation standards of the National Park Service and the State of California Historic Preservation Office’s (SHPO). Fortunately the most recent attempt took, as the current owner, who acquired the property in 2004, and his architect found the successful path to rejuvenation of the building substantially completed in 2009.

Ford Exterior West - Photo by Charles Benton

• Architect: Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects
• Location: Richmond, California
• Year: 2009
• Software: AutoCAD

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