The Urban Outfitters corporate campus, housed in five rehabilitated buildings in the historic Philadelphia Navy Yard, provides new design studio and office space for the company’s distinctive retail brands while celebrating the idiosyncratic remnants of more than 125 years of ship building. site Located at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, the Navy Yard served as a ship building and repair facility from 1868 through 1996. Decommissioned, it’s 187 buildings were abandoned. In 2004, the 1,000-acre National Historic District was master planned for redevelopment—an evolution from public ownership to private use. When Urban Outfitters, Inc., first considered the site, the existing structures were dilapidated. Despite the decay, the soul of the Navy Yard spoke to the company’s founder, Dick Hayne. He purchased four historic buildings, with an option on one, that were constructed from 1880 through 1939. Pro ject Urban Outfitters, a clothing and housewares retailer, was the first major non-ship building corporation to move to the Navy Yard. Each building now houses a different division of the company: the Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters retail brands’ design studios and offices; shared services’ offices; and a campus commons. The design— including building documentation—and renovation was completed within 23 months. Using the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentive Program, the client invested over $100 million in the 285,000 square-foot project. Outcome The buildings once operated to produce naval vessels, alternating between construction, repair, and even scrapping decommissioned ships. The design centers on utilizing the factory characteristics of the buildings—industrial materiality, open volumes, and access to daylight—to repurpose the buildings’ major function from production to creativity. The synthesis of four measures—art, culture, economy, and environment—results in the transformation from a public, production-based yard to a private, creativity-based one.