Thursday, May 2, 2024

Ford bids a fond farewell to its historic Product Development Center

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This radically different approach is what will determine the future of Ford. One of the most exciting aspects of the early learning about design is realizing just how many areas it encompasses. From making autonomous rideshare vehicles to designing an ecosystem of connected services around sustainable transit, human-centered design in particular enables individuals to rethink how they go about their lives and how they look at the world around them. Ford’s global innovation labs represent the design-intensive core of the company. In each, a nimble group of design practitioners gets their hands dirty iterating, fixing, and prototyping possibilities for the next era of mobility.

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Snøhetta designs research building for Ford employees in Michigan - Dezeen

Snøhetta designs research building for Ford employees in Michigan.

Posted: Tue, 27 Apr 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]

That’s a mouthful of corporate feel-good talk, but like daylighting long-buried city streams and dismantling sections of freeways, opening up tightly monitored industrial sites is a concept with growing international appeal. Ford’s liberation of the site comes in an era when such closer-to-nature features as recreation paths, rental bicycles, scooters, storm-water swales and bike lanes have become part of the landscape in both Detroit and its suburbs. Ford Motor Co. on Monday gave media folks such as us here at Auto Motion a peek behind the doors at its West Coast design studio in Irvine. As chief Designer of the Ford GT and the SVT Studio, Camilo’s team worked on the 2005 and 2006 production Ford GT .

The Magazine of the San Francisco Design Center

ford design center

Ford's Product Development Center in Dearborn is a special place with many stories to tell. After its construction began in 1953, the building was up and running within two years, acting as the base of all Ford Vice Presidents of Design since 1955. That means its walls, roundtables and secret courtyard at the back saw not only every Ford designed for America over the last 66 years, but also concepts and clay models shipped in from former umbrella companies like Land Rover, Jaguar and Volvo.

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WSU alumna Emeline King recounts her legacy as Ford Motor Co.'s first Black female transportation designer - Wayne State University

WSU alumna Emeline King recounts her legacy as Ford Motor Co.'s first Black female transportation designer.

Posted: Thu, 17 Mar 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

This sentiment is echoed by Mark Stehrenberger, a teacher and designer in his own right, at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He says that the campus is building a new wing just to house computers, and that computer companies are using students as guinea pigs as they test new software that eventually will find its way into studios. Apart from the weather, another strong influence that helps the California design studios is the proximity of the entertainment industry.

We suddenly saw that a comprehensive organizational change was in motion here—design thinking now lived in Ford’s DNA and they were taking it forward. New technology also has allowed manufacturers to integrate their California design studios into their worldwide systems, often turning them into production studios rather than just advanced concept studios. And that concentrations of design studios are yet another reason that SoCal is the automotive capital of the United States as well as the automotive capital of the world.

Of course, California has been influencing auto designers for decades thanks to the Art Center, just north of downtown L.A. It was built on an 800-acre site across the road from The Henry Ford Museum and included nine new buildings, in addition to some that were already there. Ford's designers also used the space to make final adjustments to clay models, which arrived here straight from the milling workshop.

ford design center

How Design is Driving Ford to Reimagine What a Car Company Can Be

Design thinking has been permeating the organization system-wide, often spearheaded by inspired employees eager to explore new ways of working. Within a large organization, the work isn’t so much about applying a process, but helping the company itself improve its resilience and uptake of new ideas. We can push the edge by asking tough questions about what people—the customers or users of their products and services—really want, and figuring out what needs to change in order to fulfill those desires. When developing a new vehicle, defining the concept is a significant investment in time and resources. Using this approach, the team achieved a massive reduction in design development time, in turn reducing cost to the company and accelerating the time to market.

To push sustainability, rather than cut grass once a week, planners are designating many areas as “no-mow zones” so a natural prairie look takes hold. They’re also building bioswales and retention ponds to keep rainwater out of Dearborn’s sewer system. Workers recently completed the construction of unguarded vehicle entrances and sidewalks that are twice the normal width, to accommodate pedestrians and bicycles, though most perimeter fencing remains in place. In a reflection of past thinking, one length of the barrier is composed of black steel bars with arrowhead-like tips. A Ford Land spokeswoman said it is uncertain when the fences will be removed.

For this reason the California studios have become the place where American cars are designed for European and Japanese companies. This trend toward regional designs has been going on for several years but it is now making itself felt in the marketplace. Chuck Pelly, founder of Designworks/USA, says that the entertainment, computer and fashion industries help make California a leader when it comes to vehicle design. His studio, wholly owned by BMW since 1995, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1997, making him one of the originators of the idea that California could be a design center. Mr. Pelly is not at liberty to discuss exactly what his studio has done recently, but does admit that "we enjoyed our heavy involvement" in the upcoming new 3-Series BMW.

It also has several names connected to animals, including Moon When the Ducks Come Back, Moon When the Geese Lay Eggs, Frog Moon and Sucker Moon. Positioned in the global creative hub of Los Angeles for over 20 years, the Advanced Design team proudly continues GM Design’s presence in California. Beyond car buying, I also share easy to understand vehicle reviews without too much technical jargon. Whether you’re talking about the Volvo XC90, their midsize crossover; the XC60, their compact crossover, which just one the North American Utility of the Year Award.

The development team, called Team Edison, was made up of broad expertise, including members leading the design, charging strategy, infotainment, and marketing of electric vehicles. Thanks to the company-wide shift toward human-centered design, Team Edison was truly able to exercise creative license and operate in a different way. Customer outlooks and desires are evolving, and by listening to what’s true for their user, the team created a vehicle that aligns with the changing world. So, it’s not surprising that so many design studios are located here in Southern California. We’re known for having the best weather in the country and San Diego probably the best climate in the country.

Ford is now building a new Dearborn campus in place of its historic Product Development Center, but you can relive the history here. Over the years the Prototyping and Fabrication Lab has provided an opportunity for both undergraduate and graduate students to gain invaluable practical design and equipment experience to complement their traditional classroom education.

The new Product Development Center is being designed by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural firm. The Central Campus and Hub Neighborhood portions of the sprawling campus are expected to be completed in 2025. Callum says one of the features of the facility that he will always remember is the corridor outside the showroom in the Styling Building’s circular rotunda. Nicknamed Mahogany Row, the wood-paneled corridor is curved so you can’t see around the corner as you’re walking, which Callum says was “pretty trendy” for the time.

As a designer, I was always taught it’s valuable to be able to say, I designed that—it’s on a shelf somewhere. Now we’re getting to a moment when it’s more valuable to create impact and influence rather than an object in space. We’re beginning to see new ways to measure impact, and better ways to affect change.

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