Ford Campus Plan
Dearborn, MI
The Ford Campus Plan re-imagines the company’s Research & Engineering (R&E) Campus as a new global epicenter through empowered workplaces, productive landscapes, smart technology, and versatile mobility systems. Building off an extensive, year-long process of research, programming, and interviews with over 40 different leadership and employee focus groups, the Campus Plan is a direct response to the needs of Ford employees and their interconnected communities. Its design is based on a conceptual framework that conceives of Ford’s natural and built environments, employees, neighboring communities, and the movement between them as symbiotic parts of one Ford ‘ecosystem’.
A key element of the Campus Plan is four new neighborhoods called the Hub, the Hamlet, and the Exchange. The Hub proposes the largest concentration of building density at the site’s northwest corner—closest to Dearborn’s urban core, regional transit, and the Henry Ford Museum. Connected with a system of bridges and networked floor plates, the Hamlet and Exchange provide additional workspace and product-line team adjacencies that support the centralized activities in the Hub. Consolidating Ford’s employees that are currently dispersed throughout Dearborn and southeast Michigan will co-locate an employee workforce of 20,000 people in state-of-the-art research and production spaces to facilitate the easy circulation of ideas, catalyze opportunities for collaboration, and inspire product innovation.
A new global epicenter with empowered workplaces, productive landscapes, smart technology & versatile mobility systems.
The proposal replaces the campus’ extensive acres of surface car parking that currently separates employees with consolidated multi-level parking facilities on the campus perimeter. Employees will traverse the campus via walkways and a main automated transit loop. Pedestrians, cyclists, and autonomous micro-transit, will integrate and circulate in ‘living streets’, which are designed as paths for transit and places for people.
Large portions of the site will be re-naturalized with native savanna and hardwood forest ecologies, creating habitats for people, flora, and fauna in equal measure. These spaces will facilitate work activities and recreation for Ford and its neighbors, shift with the seasons, and evolve over time.
This project was completed while Josh Dannenberg was at Snøhetta.
Renderings by Plompmozes.