McLaren Technology Centre
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A subject after Mike's heart...an eco-friendly factory. I was watching a program on this piece of ultra-cool the other day. It houses all the design and production facilities for McLaren F1 racing. It's built low so that it can't be seen from the road. The lake, which together with the kidney shaped building forms a perfect circle is used to provide water for both for the air conditioning and to cool the massive turbines powering the wind tunnel facility.
The interior has been designed, rather like the Pompidou Centre, so that all the technology and ducting forms an integral part of the overall design. Seems like a nice place to work.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/03/mclaren_technol.php
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(www.mclaren.com)
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Its a beautiful design Alan. I had viewed it some time
ago but its always a pleasure to review good stuff.On the subject of good stuff, I was watching a program
on Concrete Development last night on the National
Geographic Channel, a full history of concrete the good,
the bad and the ugly from Roman times.One design that struck me as just perfect was this,
http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/jubilee/index.htm
The concrete is 'self cleaning'!Mike
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That is a beautiful design and yes, what a fantastic place that must be to work.
I never realized Mclaren had such a building and designed by Foster none the less.Mike I also love that church. Im a big fan of Richard Meiers work. I modelled one of his residential projects last year and am about to start another.
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Here's another cool building based around a pond. It's the Red Bull HQ.
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Wow! Incredible! My dream job is to work as a Quality Engineer for a Formula 1 team...and now I've decided that McLaren will do.
Thanks for sharing!!
Cheers,
- CraigD -
I saw an article about the McLaren Technology Centre in an auto magazine. It seems that the building is both an architectural triumph and an expression of it's director's mental health.
Here's a quote I found on-line from http://www.icon-magazine.co.uk/issues/november/mclaren.htm
@unknownuser said:
Indeed, the building has become something of a built expression of Ron Dennis himself. Many of the operative features of the building are a result of his personal ethic, such as his clean desk policy, a rule of no food or drink in desk areas, his hatred of blinds, pipes and cables ("How can a mind be right if under the desk is a chaos of wires?") and his no-touching plan for many office systems, such as the lavatories, in which the flush, soap dispenser, tap and dryer are all operated by sensor. Dennis wants to achieve a space that attracts and facilitates the best minds in the business through what boils down to social engineering. The problem is that the metaphor of the building as an extension of McLaren's F1 cars reduces the people inside it to cogs and valves
For me, that changes the beautiful space into something a little sinister.
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