The Master Plan imagined by Snøhetta aims to transform Ford's Research & Engineering center in southeast Michigan. After a process that lasted 2 years, the architecture firm established a project that highlights the Dearborn campus as “Ford’s global epicenter”, ensuring an innovative and vibrant workplace for people.
Snøhetta, currently working on a number of international projects, created in this venture new configurations for the workspaces and centers of excellence where talent can thrive. As Ford aims to lead the industry in future-facing mobility solutions, the proposed master plan comes to enhance this status, “through empowered workplaces, productive landscapes, smart technology, and versatile mobility systems”.
With this new project, employees will be grouped in one area, “state-of-the-art research and production space”, in order to enhance communication and collaborative opportunities. Productivity can, therefore, become much more efficient. In fact, the framework of the master plan emerged as a direct response to the needs of Ford employees as well as the neighboring communities. The project becomes a commitment between the company and its workers, “creating a people-first workplace”.
On another hand, the project intended to give answers to major problematics around the nature of a productive landscape and a productive architecture, around the design of environments that enhance interaction, wellness, creativity, and innovation, and finally around attractiveness and efficiency of these spaces.
Moreover, “while complex and multi-layered in its execution, the Master Plan’s approach at large operates through three key actions: consolidating Ford populations, integrating skill teams to optimize critical adjacencies, and creating opportunities for interaction, knowledge sharing, and ideation”. The new campus concentrates the built density and doubles the number of employees. The site is transit-rich, it is “connected directly to amenities and key adjacencies and networked through a shared transportation loop, limiting personal vehicular access to the site’s perimeter”.
Owner and Client: Ford Motor Company
Master Planning, Architect, and Landscape Architect: Snøhetta
Engineering: Arup
Information & Communications Technology: The Sextant Group
Ecological Consultant: Applied Ecological Services
Pre-construction services: Barton Malow
Cost Modeling: Directional Logic
Programming: Gensler
Cultural Consultant: Steelcase
