This manuscript describes a pedagogical approach to integrating industrial architecture with civic life through design education. It explores how a graduate studio at a prominent midwestern school of architecture engaged students in imagining new urban typologies that embed industry within civic centers, using the Chicago River and its Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMDs) as a testing ground. By rethinking the symbolic, spatial, and social roles of industrial buildings, the studio proposed new hybrid programs that position industry as both functional and representational civic architecture.