Rotisserie chickens and design secrets

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor is swapping its 1950s “Glass House” headquarters for a new, modern industrial facility to promote collaboration and better appease thousands of employees who have returned to offices in recent years after remote working.

The new 2.1-million-square-foot facility in Dearborn, Michigan, is ceremoniously opening Sunday, although construction is expected to continue into 2027.

It replaces a 12-story, rectangular-shaped headquarters roughly three miles away in the city that is expected to be demolished. The new building marks Ford’s sixth headquarters since its founding in 1903.

Currently nicknamed “The Hub,” the new headquarters will consolidate thousands of employees and several prior locations under one — albeit very large — roof. It is eventually expected to be home to up to 4,000 executives and employees involved with daily business operations, design and product development.

From an operational basis, the new headquarters is roughly split evenly between design and industrial operations. Design includes massive studios with hidden courtyards and a large showroom. The other half is set to be used for general business operations such as executive offices and common work and meeting areas.

There are very few actual offices outside of those for top executives, according to the company. The idea is for employees to be able to work as they choose in different areas, or “neighborhoods,” depending on what they’re working on that day, officials said. Domain staking, where employees attempt to make a space their permanent workplace, will be discouraged, said Jennifer Kolstad, global design and brand director for Ford Land, the automaker’s property management group.

“It’s not just a building. This is a space that is a tool for our employees to be more productive, to be more collaborative, and really help deliver the Ford+ plan,” said Jim Dobleske, Ford Land chair and CEO, during a tour of the building.

The Ford+ plan was introduced by CEO Jim Farley as a turnaround and efficiency plan for the automaker in 2021.

As of the end of last year, Ford employed roughly 30,500 white-collar salaried workers in the U.S. The company continues to own or utilize other properties throughout the U.S., including large bases in Dearborn and surrounding areas.

Many salaried employees are expected in offices at least four days a week, as of earlier this year, after many of them had a more loose hybrid office-home schedule following the end of the pandemic.

“We’re inviting them back into a space that is a tool to help them do their best work. And that best work tends to come with collaboration with other teams,” Dobleske said.

Some of that collaboration is expected to occur over food.

The new headquarters includes a 160,000-square-foot dining area with eight “kitchen concepts” that will feature rotating menus as well as take-home options such as pizza and $6 whole rotisserie chickens, decadent desserts and a juice bar complete with a herb garden.

“We have guests coming in from all over the world, so we wanted to make sure we have designed our menus to kind of play homage to that diversity,” said Grant Vella, executive chef for the new ]headquarters. “We wanted to do something different, push the boundary of business dining.”

Outside of the kitchens and dining areas, vegetation and outdoor spaces are meant to make for a more walkable-friendly campus compared with the automaker’s prior, largely street- and parking lot-locked facility.

“This headquarters is the cornerstone of our campus redevelopment, but there’s been a tremendous amount of work that we have done throughout the campus to really connect it and make it much more walkable for our employees,” Dobleske said, pointing to several facilities and areas, including a test track and 18-acre “Horsepower Park,” surrounding the building.

Inside the building are six courtyards, including a dual-level one at the center of the company’s new design studios to allow designers to take products outside to view them outdoors in natural light. Those design courtyards are exclusive areas that can only be viewed by the surrounding, private studios.

Most of the four-story building features outside natural light from the exterior glass walls as well as skylights and other windowed areas.

In addition to making a more walkable exterior campus, Ford wants employees to use purposefully designed stairs rather than elevators and escalators that are the primary modes of transportation in its most-recent 12-story headquarters.

Craig Dykers, founding partner of Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta that worked on the building, said each staircase in the building, especially in its 14 different arrival areas, are prominent and meant to be inviting to use.

“Obviously people don’t naturally want to climb a stair, so you have to design it very carefully so that people feel good about using the stair,” he said. “Part of the trick is that as you go up one flight, you don’t necessarily see the next flight, so it’s kind of a journey.”

Stairs inside the main lobby of the building are extremely wide and feature seating areas alongside the actual low-rise stairs. There’s also a coffee bar on a large landing above the main lobby.

The coffee bar overlooks a white artwork that features vehicle parts — one of many prominent pieces of art Ford purchased or has curated for the new facility. Others are photos or drawings of vehicles, while some are simply non-automotive artistic pieces.

Inside the company’s design operations are large studios with advanced clay milling machines, a spacious showroom that will operate as a modern design dome and a 64-foot screen showing virtual reviews and testing.

What employees will not see much of is the company’s logo, the well-known blue oval surrounding the “Ford” name. There will be a massive Ford blue oval logo on the outside of the building but not on its interior. Unless you look closely.

On some exterior glass walls, such as the company’s design operations, there’s a glass pattern that features the ovals accompanied by hidden numbers that represent Ford patents.

Ford declined to discuss the capital spent to build its new headquarters and design center, which was part of a previously announced $1 billion campus transformation that began under former CEO Jim Hackett, who previously led furniture company Steelcase.

Here’s a look inside the new world headquarters: