Tampering With an Icon?
Last week, in the fourth installment of a five part series, we looked at the environmental side of the updated Rouge facility as well as the historic facilities that Ford restored during the redevelopment of the site. Today, the focus is on the Rouge from an architectural viewpoint, as well as an attempt to grasp the massive scale of the project.
When Henry Ford designed the Rouge, he had a vision of an integrated facility and it's still totally consistent with the current renovation, McDonough said.
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| The original Rouge, designed by Henry Ford, was a model of integration that is continued in the current renovation. (Photo: Ford Motor Company) |
"He saw the world as a very large place and that manufacturing could have an impact on global conditions and that we could develop ways of thinking about manufacturing on that scale. These concepts are very important to me... I'm involved in creating new industrial protocols. I work at the level of thought in terms of setting the frame conditions for manufacturing that are consistent with that level of imagination," the architect added.
The new Rouge has been created as a template that can be replicated elsewhere, with design ideas that can even be used by competing architectural firms, much to McDonough's delight.
"When we compete with our professional colleagues, we delight when they want to take our strategies and execute them," he said. "I think one of the greatest legacies of the Rouge is that there are now architectural firms and builders all over the country that won't have a second thought of a habitat on a roof."
When Kahn designed the Rouge, he had a far different strategy, not having the mechanical systems and flexible manufacturing schemes used today, he said.
"He was actually trying to create machines that functioned as buildings. Those buildings functioned as day lighting machines and ventilation machines. He got to build all that, but we could not afford to build what he did today. What we were doing was building a large volume building at the lowest possible price that had the best possible effects in the world," McDonough said.