“We have moved through many different postures towards the husband-and-wife architect-duo archetype, but we’re embodying that vibe now, and we’re happy with it,” said Nicko Elliott, principal and cofounder, with his partner and wife, Ksenia Kagner, of CIVILIAN. “I mean, we’re new, right? In the timeline of the architecture or design career, we’re still infants.”

After establishing their practice five years ago, Elliott and Kagner only recently began to feel they were picking up as a proper studio, thanks in part to their biggest commercial commission yet: the interior design of Newlab Detroit, the latest outpost of the innovation hub founded seven years ago in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The project was realized in collaboration with Michigan Central, a Ford Motor Company initiative for mobility innovation, with Ghafari as the interior architect of record. After Elliott’s decade-long connection with Newlab’s cofounder David Belt through the latter’s development company, Macro Sea, CIVILIAN was presented with a renovated 270,000-square-foot art deco building from 1936: the Albert Kahn–designed former Book Depository building, which was revitalized in 2020 by Gensler Detroit.

Read more about the project on aninteriormag.com.