Metropolis Digital Optimism Talks logo

Join us every second Tuesday of the month for a dose of optimism with thought-provoking guests who are revolutionizing their fields. Innovators will lead virtual workshops for an hour of discovery, inspiration, and community. Led by editor in chief, Avinash Rajagopal, these workshops will be guided by our audience, where questions are not only welcome but encouraged.

Register Now
natural habitat cold spring home exterior

Metropolis Editors, Natural Habitat, sustainability, sustainable architecture

METROPOLIS Introduces Natural Habitat, a Sustainable Homes Video Series

The series debuts with a tour of a tranquil upstate New York retreat designed with Passive House principles.

Read more
Brick building on a Detroit street corner with a protruding facade of colored brick in a chevron pattern.
Detroit’s LOVE Building, designed by Quinn Evans and Deanna Van Buren’s Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, houses local social justice organizations whose work centers liberation, advocacy, and care. It also serves as a gathering space, a cultural home, and a point of connection for community. Van Buren emphasizes that the building was never meant to be a neutral container: “This wasn’t about creating a shell,” she says. “It was about creating a place that could actually hold the work happening inside it.” Courtesy Steve-Hall

March 18, 2026

Deanna Van Buren Is Designing Justice and Belonging in Detroit

In collaboration with Quinn Evans and Allied Media Projects, the LOVE Building shows how architecture rooted in care, access, and justice can help shape a more inclusive future.

By: Lynzee Mychael

Detroit is rebuilding again, and this time the stakes feel different.

As cranes rise and historic structures are reimagined, the city is asking an old question in a new way: Who is this renaissance really for?  It is also a question that Deanna Van Buren has spent years sitting with.

Van Buren is the founder of Oakland-based Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), a practice built on a bold premise: Architecture should do more than look good. It should repair, hold, and protect. In Detroit, her inclusive design processes take physical form in the LOVE Building, a space that feels less like a commissioned project and more like a promise kept.

Deanna Van Buren’s path to the LOVE Building did not begin in Detroit. It began with a growing discomfort inside a profession she knew well.

LOVE Building interior, featuring large bright windows, exposed brick, concrete pillars, and modern furnishings with two figures.
The LOVE Building feels relational, it encourages gathering, it makes room for pause, and it supports nervous systems rather than overwhelming them. “People tell us the first thing they want is space to be together,” Van Buren says. “This building is designed for that.” Courtesy Steve-Hall
Modern workplace interior; grey carpet and poufs in the foreground, with seated figures working at modular desks in the background.
Courtesy Steve-Hall

Reimagining Design’s Role in Detroit’s Future

Raised in Virginia, Van Buren spent years overseas doing corporate architecture work, fluent in the systems that reward scale, capital, and prestige. Still, something felt misaligned. “Most architects work for corporate or institutional clients because that’s where the money is,” she says. “But doesn’t everyone deserve good design that’s beautiful, caring, and supportive?”

That question became a line she could not cross back over. “I made the decision that I was going to use public interest design to develop an infrastructure for restorative justice as a totally different way of doing justice,” Van Buren says. 

That decision clearly echoes in her work in Detroit. In a city where the bones of the auto industry still shape the skyline and a renaissance is unfolding block by block, “development” can mean anything. It can mean restored landmarks, new tenants, fresh sidewalks, and progress you can touch. But it can also mean communities pushed to the margins, culture extracted, and neighborhoods treated like blank canvases instead of living ecosystems. 

Three people sitting in chairs in a seating area. A sign in the background reads: Community Works and Justice Demands Humanity.
Designed with accessibility in mind, the interior of the building is scent free; color contrast supports communication; and texture and materiality help people navigate in different ways. For Van Buren, “Access can’t be fragile. If one thing goes down, the whole building shouldn’t fail people.” Courtesy Community Works
A group of six people sit in a circle on poufs (one sits in a grey Togo) in a glass-enclosed meeting room, with purple walls and a colorful mural.
Courtesy Community Works
Birds-eye view of a cozy corner with a velvet chair, partition screen, potted plant and forest wallpaper.
Cultural events, art activations, meetings, and community gatherings keep the spaces inside of the building alive. “A building succeeds when people use it,” Van Buren says. “That’s how you know it’s working.” For her, collaboration is not just about credit: It is about integrity. The LOVE Building stands as proof that when values are shared early and protected throughout the process, they do not get lost between drawings and delivery. Courtesy Community Works
Office interior with exposed ductwork, a blue wave mural, wooden cabinetry and a group of people sitting in a circle
Courtesy Community Works

A Community Hub Leads The Way

The LOVE Building, which opened its doors in September 2024, is one answer to some of these tensions. The collaboration started when Detroit-rooted organization Allied Media Projects (AMP) wanted a space that could house multiple Detroit-based social justice organizations. It wanted a building that was aligned with its shared values around liberation, care, and collective transformation.

From the outside, the building signals openness rather than authority. Its relationship to the street is intentional, transparent, and inviting. Inside, the space unfolds with clarity, natural light moves throughout generously, and circulation is intuitive. It is a space that does not ask visitors to shape-shift, code-switch, or prove the organization’s legitimacy at the door, and there is no moment where you wonder if you are allowed to be there. “The building is meant to care for people, not manage them,” Van Buren says. 

Van Buren and her team worked closely with AMP and with architect of record Quinn Evans. When Saundra Little, principal and director of diversity and inclusion at Quinn Evans, reached out to Van Buren to collaborate, she noted how beautiful the existing building was. “Structurally, it was everything you would want. But it became apparent very quickly that you could not just renovate one floor,” she explained. “If we were going to do this right, the entire building needed a master plan.”

Workshop for upcycled furniture with a figure showing a plank of wood, cabinetry in the background.
Van Buren collaborated with Formr, a workshop that turns upcycled waste into furniture (left), on a limited-edition table collection that underscores the organizations’ commitment to social impact. Below: Van Buren and Formr CEO and founder Sasha Plotitsa. Courtesy DJDS X Formr
Deanna Van Buren (left) and colleague (right) pose for a photo.
Courtesy DJDS X Formr

DJDS entered the project as design lead, supporting both the architectural vision and the real estate strategy. Van Buren’s team helped develop early plans, renderings, and the pro forma that allowed AMP to begin fundraising and securing financing. DJDS has also acquired nearby land, with plans to expand the vision into a broader campus rooted in regenerative development and community ownership. 

The teams continued to collaborate through workshops and design sessions along the way, ensuring that decisions reflected lived experience rather than assumption.

Three tables in a line, each made with salvaged wood.
Made with salvaged wood, each table was produced by someone who was formerly incarcerated. In collaboration with nonprofit A New Way of Life, the proceeds went to supporting women transitioning from incarceration to independent living. Courtesy DJDS X Formr

Designing for Inclusion

The approach to accessibility was just one thing that emerged from those early workshops. Throughout the project, accessibility was not treated as a constraint but as a design driver. “At first, the thought was that we would create a ramp from the back of the building,” explains Little. “But then the question was asked: why do people with disabilities have to enter from the back?” That reframed the work. “Instead of working around the building, we realized we could change the building.” Floors were leveled, entrances reoriented, and access moved front and center, not hidden or secondary. 

Today, the building is home to seven distinct nonprofit organizations, each doing work rooted in justice, culture, and care. According to Kwaku Osei, the building’s executive director, “The building does not flatten their missions. It amplifies them.”

The LOVE Building stands as proof that justice can be designed, access can be beautiful, and care can be structural. Van Buren believes creativity is essential to this. “Creativity is an antidote to fear and apathy,” she says. “Now is the time to be dreaming and preparing at the same time.”

Would you like to comment on this article? Send your thoughts to: [email protected]

Recent