Dearborn, Michigan
1999 - 2001

Henry Ford built the American dream of a manufacturing facility where coal came in one end and a finished car out the other. Generations toiled at this 1200-acre plant on the River Rouge, where hundreds of cars and trucks continue to roll off a renewed assembly line. William Clay Ford Jr. envisioned the opportunity to transform this industrial icon of the twentieth century into a model of sustainable industry for the twenty-first. Rather than construct a new plant on a suburban greenfield, the historic Rouge Complex is revitalized by incorporating ambitious ecological systems.

Built Ford Tough, the landscape infrastructure converts polluting industrial operations into a new landscape of production through biological technologies, manufacturing vehicles along with clean water, air and soil. Operations masked when tours ceased decades ago are now revealed through visible signs of the regenerated Rouge, demonstrating a new model of environmentally integrated manufacturing to hundreds of visitors.

Clients + Collaborators

Ford Motor Company; William McDonough + Partners, architects; Nelson/Byrd/Woltz, landscape architects; Cahill Associates, engineers; Dr. Clayton Rugh, scientist; Larry Lankton, historian