Albert Kahn was an American industrial architect who designed industrial plant complexes such as the Ford River Rouge automobile complex. He designed the construction of Detroit skyscrapers and office buildings as well as mansions in the city suburbs. He led an organization of hundreds of architect associates and in 1937, designed 19% of all architect-designed industrial factories in the United States. Under a unique contract in 1929, Kahn established a design and training office in Moscow, sending twenty-five staff there to train Soviet architects and engineers, and to design hundreds of industrial buildings under their first five-year plan. They trained more than 4,000 architects and engineers using Kahn's concepts. In 1943, the Franklin Institute posthumously awarded Kahn the Frank P. Brown Medal.

The Ford River Rouge complex is a Ford Motor Company automobile factory complex located in Dearborn, Michigan, along the River Rouge, upstream from its confluence with the Detroit River at Zug Island. Construction began in 1917, and when it was completed in 1928, it was the largest integrated factory in the world, surpassing Buick City, built in 1904.