Ford converted its 1924 engineering lab on the Dearborn campus into a modern office envisioned as a blueprint for global workplace standards across more than 300 million square feet of offices in 46 countries. The renovated space prioritizes human-centric, post-pandemic design with diverse work settings including open collaboration areas, small modular meeting rooms, team desk clusters, café seats, and lounge-style chairs. The design seeks to shift culture away from fixed desks toward flexible spaces that reflect how work actually happens. The building aims to influence hiring and employee experience by modeling adaptable, social, and collaborative environments.
Even though it was built more than 100 years ago, a former engineering lab on the Ford Motor campus in Dearborn, Michigan, is a vision of the company's future. The building originally opened in 1924 as a kind of early research and development lab, but Ford has now transformed it into a modern office building that the company sees as a model for its new global workplace standards.
Sitting on a long curving couch within one of the open collaboration and social spaces in the center of the building, she points out the range of spaces around her. There are small modular meeting rooms, clusters of desks for small teams, café seats, and cushy chairs with side tables that look straight out of a fancy hotel lobby. "Before, Ford Motor Co. was a culture of desks," Kolstad says.
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