Ford Motor Co. will move into a new world headquarters inside of its main product development campus a few miles away from its current corporate office building. In turn, Ford will tear down “Glass House,” the 12-story building that had served as its HQ for the last 70 years. More from Headlight.News.
Ford’s main headquarters, known as Glass House, under construction shortly before opening in 1955.
As it ends its work-at-home policy, Ford has decided it needs more space than what’s available at its current world headquarters and will move into a new and substantial larger building a few miles away.
The facility will be twice the size of the current facility, widely known as “Glass House,” and by being part of Ford’s product development campus, it will be “bringing thousands of our engineering, design, and technology team members together in one collaborative space,” the automaker said in a letter to employees released Monday morning.
The move will take until 2027 to complete, Ford said and, once it’s done, the current, 70-year old headquarters will be torn down and likely transformed into a park or another type of community space.
Why the move
Ford New World HQ will be twice as large as Glass House.
Like so many other large companies, Ford adopted a work-at-home policy during the COVID pandemic. It now has employees back on a four-day-a-week schedule. It is, meanwhile, trying to recruit new talent to address the auto industry’s push into new technologies, such as autonomous driving and electrified and connected vehicles.
Ford determined it needs a more modern facility to address today’s challenges. It also wants to position its headquarters closer to its product development center to encourage collaboration and break down traditional silos, it explained in its letter to employees and a subsequent news release.
“When the building is complete, 14,000 employees will be within a 15-minute walk, enabling collaboration in practice and proximity,” Ford said.
The new HQ
The new world headquarters will be located within the Ford Engineering Center.
Ford has spent billions of dollars – and nearly a decade – reshaping its product development complex. What will become the new world headquarters was already under construction for a more limited role. It will be enlarged to take on this expanded role.
“Any Ford employee can access collaboration space at the new building, which brings cross-functional teams together through three main types of spaces: Workplace, Amenities, and Unique Programming (Design Studios, Showroom, Fabrication Shops, and Garages) to support different working styles,” it explained.
In all, the four-story building will have 2.1 million square feet of floor space. It will feature a more open layout allowing quicker and easier movement of both employees and materials, Ford noting “it can accommodate a vehicle almost anywhere.”
Ultimately, the facility will house twice as many employees as Glass House did at its peak.
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Emphasis on product development
About 14,000 Ford employees will be within a 15-minute walk of the new HQ building.
Like its competitors, Ford is struggling to both speed up the product development process and lower development costs. It hopes the collaborative nature of the new facility’s design will help achieve those goals. Among the features of the facility, Ford noted in its release:
- Six Design Studios allow for confidential reviews in indoor and outdoor space;
- Design Showroom enables Ford to conduct a full product review in one unified space for the first time, featuring 10 turntables and state-of-the-art lighting, a zero-degree pitched floor extending out to the courtyard review space, and a 64-foot micro-LED screen for comparing digital, full-size vehicles;
- Large event spaces for hundreds of employees with state-of-the-art technology to accommodate needs in-house, as well as 303 tech-enabled meeting rooms;
- 26 vehicle turntables throughout for product display and review.
Ford’s not alone
GM will finish moving out of its Renaissance Center headquarters by January 2026.
“It’s really emblematic of what we’ve been trying to do, which is give our employees around the world great places to work,” Ford Chairman Bill Ford told reporters about the new HQ.
The second-largest Detroit automaker isn’t the only one making a big move. In April 2024 General Motors announced it was abandoning the Renaissance Center, a sprawling complex of office towers along the Detroit River. Despite investing an estimate $2 billion in the “RenCen,”
GM had been slowly moving many of its operations out to the vast Technical Center complex in the Detroit suburb of Warren. A downsized headquarters staff will move about a mile away to new office space along Woodward Ave., one of Detroit’s main thoroughfares. That transition is expected to be completed by next January.
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