Battling Rust Belt decline with a startlingly modern design, a New York City-based developer and architect have unveiled plans this week for Cadillac Centre, a $150-million residential, retail, and entertainment complex in the heart of downtown Detroit. Images courtesy Northern Group Inc. Cadillac Centre, designed by Anthony Caradonna, will feature two 24-story sculpted glass-and-steel apartment towers with 84 rental units, atop a 12-story base containing retail, cinemas, a health club and spa, restaurants, and 800 parking spaces. Cadillac Center will complete a circle of buildings around Campus Martius, Detroit's historic central square, where two other newer towers rise nearby. Named

With $158 million to spend, many an art museum might opt to build a new wing or two. Not so the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which reopened last weekend with Michael Graves’ long-awaited renovation. The project reclad some of the DIA’s exteriors, rethought the way art is displayed and labeled in its existing galleries, and made interior circulation much clearer and easier. Images: ' John Gallagher (top); Courtesy Detroit Institute of Arts (bottom two). Michael Graves re-clad the exterior and reconfigured the interior of a 1960s-era addition to the Detroit Institute of Arts, opened in 1927. Although construction crews

It looks as though a library designed by Marcel Breuer in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, will be spared the wrecking ball. The local community library board met last night to evaluate an expansion plan designed by Boston-based designLAB architects. The scheme retains the original, 1953-vintage building and doubles its space with a sympathetic, Breuer-inspired addition. Although the board is not scheduled to vote on the scheme until October 22, momentum has decisively shifted away from an earlier push to demolish Breuer’s only Detroit-area building. Photo © John Gallagher Opened in 1953, the Grosse Point Public Library is the only Detroit-area