On April 25, hundreds of people gathered for the opening of Newlab’s Motor City headquarters located at the historic Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, a 270,000-square-foot former post office-turned-school supplies warehouse designed by Albert Kahn in 1936. Newlab—an interdisciplinary technology center for start-ups that launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2016—hopes its Detroit hub, stunningly rehabilitated by Gensler and the New York–based architecture and interior design studio Civilian after decades of neglect, will be a “center of gravity” for entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists working to develop new technologies across mobility, sustainable energy, and materials.