by Jeremy Welu, Partner, DELV Design Studio and Sam Vonderau, Partner, DELV Design Studio | photos by Adam Reynolds and Tess Lawyer-Smith
In the morning, The Stutz feels like a quiet pocket of the city where pavers, greenery, and cool air welcome people in from 10th Street. Early activity begins with gym-goers, naturally flowing into coffee at Amelia’s, brunch at Café Patachou, or quick stops at the art supply and plant shops before work.
During the day, the upper floors settle into a steady creative rhythm, with studios and small businesses making, meeting, editing, and building behind the old factory windows. By evening, the same corridors become social again, filling with after-work gatherings, neighbors grabbing tacos, and artists returning from their studios.
What is now a vibrant hub for community and the creative economy began with a far more utilitarian purpose. Originally designed for manufacturing, The Stutz was built for making and moving racing vehicles, with long rows of factory windows, durable floors, and wide bays as its dominant features.
In its first life, The Stutz was introverted: a controlled interior meant for employees rather than passersby. A century later, that posture has shifted. The building needed to welcome people rather than screen them out. It needed to become extroverted and invite the city inside.
This shift to an extroverted posture was achieved by clearer wayfinding, updated windows, refreshed infrastructure, and selective storefront carving that makes the building more inviting from the sidewalk.
The once-car-travelled ‘roads’ through the building were converted into community halls with intuitive wayfinding. Nature-rich activated alleys with storefronts and restaurants were designed to draw people into and around the complex. The formerly utilitarian loading dock is now a car museum and event space that beckons the community in to learn the story of its automotive roots.
This redirection of energy is the quiet thesis of reclaimed industrial architecture across the Midwest. In a region rich with factories and warehouses, what continues to exist in the fabric of downtown often depends on whether these relics can be reimagined to serve current community needs.
Even with these thoughtful interventions, The Stutz does not pretend to be newly made. Fire doors remain where they always were. Old ramps stay in place. Circulation that would not be designed this way today still guides a visitor through. These quirks create pause. They ask visitors to look around and recognize that the building’s story has not been applied to the surface; it is embedded within its foundation.
Well-executed preservation makes room for a dialogue in design: old structure, new glass; guarded factory, open commons; industrial engine, cultural generator. Some changes are straightforward, guided by clear preservation standards. Others carry more emotion. Done with restraint, an intervention reads as honest, allowing the original structure to remain in charge.
This is where reclaimed industrial buildings earn their place in the contemporary world: not as museum pieces or blank stages for minimalism, but as working parts of the city again. A factory’s original purpose has a lifespan, but a building’s value does not have to end when the machines move out. Rather than erasing the past, reuse keeps a period of significance alive while setting the structure up for its next life.
The seven buildings that make up The Stutz are stitched together by corridors that once served vehicles and freight. Now pedestrian movement is the main event, and each passage leads to a different pocket of energy: coffee, conversation, a bar, studios, a museum, gatherings that draw people in and let them roam.
The Stutz now runs on different fuel. What was once an introverted factory is now an extroverted heartbeat, a place where Indianapolis’s creative economy finds its rhythm.
Project Team: DELV Design (Indianapolis, IN) Architect of Record | S9ARCHITECTURE (New York, NY), Design Architect
