Jaguar’s impressive heritage stretches back over 80 years during which it has produced some of the world’s most stunning automotive designs. From iconic classics like the XK and E-Type sports cars to contemporary offerings such as the F-Type, F-Pace and a full range of sporty sedans, producing aesthetically pleasing vehicles has clearly been and continues to be at the core of the brand.
With the incorporation of the Land Rover brand into the fold in 2013, Jaguar Land Rover is now the UK’s largest automotive manufacturer and it has just announced a new dedicated design studio situated in Gaydon that will bring the entire design team into one purpose-built facility for the first time in its history. In addition, engineering and purchasing functions will also be located here which will further go towards improving collaboration and innovation between teams.
The new facility, led by Jaguar design director Julian Thomson, is the most advanced design center in the world and aside from facilitating the development of the next-generation of vehicles and world-leading technologies it is also an integral part of Jaguar Land Rover’s Destination Zero Mission; which is the aim to achieve zero emissions, zero accidents and zero congestion across its facilities, products and services. The 4,000,000m² site is the equivalent of almost 480 football pitches and it provides an additional 50,000m² of innovative workspace. This all represents an investment of nearly £500m ($617m) over several years.
This new building will be the central point from which the 13,000 highly-skilled engineers and designers located at Gaydon will develop the next Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles along with new technologies to further autonomous, electrified and connected transport solutions. These new offices are in the top 10 percent of the most sustainable non-domestic buildings in the UK and it features a natural landscape, energy consumption from fully renewable sources and glazing technology from the Eden Project to bring in more natural light and lower energy use even further.
The Jaguar design team will be moving from its current offices in Whitley to the new purpose-built studio during September. While the details of how the team develop their award-winning designs remains a closely guarded secret, Jaguar has decided to use this move to provide a unique insight into the journey that each idea takes on its way to becoming a fully-fledged production model.
The six stages that both exterior and interior teams collaborate on are, sketching, clay sculpting, digitalization, color and materials, design technical and finally, model manufacture. The entire process takes around four years and the new Gaydon Design and Engineering Center with its cutting-edge facilities will go a long way in optimizing this design journey.
Images courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover
