Ford House Visitor Center
Grosse Pointe Shores, MI
The people the house welcomes are no longer strangers to the family inside.
KEY INFO
Client
Ford Family Estates
Scale
5500 sqft / 510 sqm
Partners
Creative Technologies, Ravenswood Studio, RLMG
Concept
For decades, visitors have come to Ford House to tour one of America's great estates. The Fords built every structure on the estate for private life, and visitors could feel it. We were invited to design the first building on the property, made entirely for the public, where people meet Eleanor and Edsel before they ever meet the house.
“You can hear the family's stories in a personal way. It's a lovely celebration of who they were and their legacy.”
Lynn Ford Alandt, Ford House Board of Trustees
A WELCOME INVITATION
Our guiding principle came from the Fords themselves: welcome people in through the things you love. Working with the architect, we shaped a building that could welcome guests without feeling institutional or losing the warmth of the home itself.
The welcome begins with a simple gesture: Eleanor and Edsel dancing. Large-scale projected footage fills the gallery with the family's home movies, narrated through the oral recollections of Edsel B. Ford II. Before visitors encounter the house and its legacy, they encounter two people. While the details belong to another era, the feeling belongs to everyone.
MEMORIES OF THE FORDS
At the center of the gallery is a dimensional, interactive dollhouse inspired by Eleanor's letters to her grandchildren. Eleanor wrote those letters for her grandchildren alone. Now they anchor the most public room on the estate, folding visitors into the family's conversation across generations. Once private anecdotes, the now-shared intimate conversations anchor the experience across generations.
Stepping back out, visitors carry the Fords' memories with them. Every room, artwork, and view across the estate lands differently because of it. What might have felt distant or iconic now feels personal. The people the house welcomes are no longer strangers to the family inside.
