Design Moves Through SpaceLab.
This September, SpaceLab Detroit becomes a meeting place for people designing what’s next – for our professions, our neighborhoods and our city.
AT SPACELAB DETROIT
Come for an event.
Leave with a connection.
We’re proud to host three Detroit Month of Design programs and convene one of our own. SpaceLab member organizations host three others across Detroit. Explore the lineup below, then follow through to each event page to reserve your place.
AT SPACELAB DETROIT
01
Industrial Heritage to Industrial Design: Learning from Manufacturing
SUN, SEPT 06, 1 PM – 3 PM
Organized by Stefan Novakovic
How does our industrial past continue to shape what we design today?
Designers, artists and makers from both sides of the border will discuss how the history of manufacturing in the Great Lakes informs the region’s distinctive contemporary design culture.
02
Design Futures Panel
THU, SEPT 10, 4 PM- 7 PM
Organized by the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design
This dynamic Design Futures panel brings together leading designers, researchers and educators whose work ranges from technology-informed foresight to community-centered and social justice-based design methodologies.
Join the conversation about the ideas, practices and possibilities shaping Detroit’s next era.
03
The Inner Landscape of Detroit
THU, SEPT 10, 6 PM- 8 PM
Organized by Jessica Myers
What if our memories could help shape the future of our neighborhoods?
Through guided mapping, memory and storytelling exercises, participants will create a collective Emotional Atlas of Detroit—and explore how lived experience can inform more inclusive, resilient and human-centered neighborhood design.
04
Designing Ownership: Who Owns Detroit’s Future
THU, SEPT 24. 4 PM – 7 PM
Hosted by SpaceLab Detroit + SpaceLab Innovation Center
The question is no longer only what we build.
It is also: Who owns it? Who benefits? Who gets to shape what comes next?
Designing Ownership is an interactive, community-centered event exploring Community Investment Trusts and Community Land Trusts as practical tools for equitable development, neighborhood wealth-building and protection against displacement.
Through conversation, shared learning and hands-on design activities, participants will move beyond theory to begin imagining ownership models rooted in Detroit’s neighborhoods.
Designers, developers, planners, residents, artists, entrepreneurs, students and policymakers are invited to help design a future in which more Detroiters can invest, own and benefit from the places they call home.
SPACELAB PRESENTS
Designing Ownership
What if we designed not only buildings and neighborhoods – but who owns them? Join a practical conversation and hands-on workshop about Community Investment Trusts and Community Land Trusts as tools for community wealth-building and equitable development.
SpaceLab’s Ecosystem – Across Detroit
The conversation extends beyond our walls with events presented by SpaceLab member organizations helping shape a more inclusive built environment.
Black Women in Architecture Brunch
SUN, SEPT 20, 11 AM – 3 PM
THE LOVE BUILDING
Presented by Noir Design Parti
A gathering centered on camaraderie, mentorship and creating pathways forward for Black women in architecture.
NOMA Detroit Design Exhibition: Designing Justice
WED, SEPT 30, 3 PM – 6 PM
COLEMAN A. YOUNG MUNICIPAL CENTER
Presented by the Detroit Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects
The exhibition showcases architecture not as a passive backdrop, but as an active facilitator of social liberation, ensuring Detroit’s architecture and creative community are at the vanguard of an equitable urban future.
Women’s Sustainable Development Initiative Annual Celebration
THU, OCT 01, 4:30 PM – 7 PM
THE SCARAB CLUB
Presented by the Women’s Sustainable Development Initiative
A celebration of women developers taking projects from vision to completion and building lasting impact in their communities.
A place for city builders.
SPACELAB DETROIT
Downtown Detroit | Financial District
SpaceLab is a coworking, meeting and event community built for the people shaping cities – architects, developers, contractors, designers, entrepreneurs and collaborators across the built environment.