In consideration of the three major typologies of the corporate campus, the corporate estate, and the office park; the office park is the category that is perhaps the most likely to go unnoticed by design professionals and the general public. Corporate estates and campuses are usually higher profile, master planned design projects using design professionals to envision buildings and landscapes that contribute to a favorable corporate image, often through the appearance of a cohesive relationship between the corporate building and its surrounding natural landscape. The office park differs in that it is not always conceived of as a coherent master plan. They are often developed over a period of decades by different builders and developers as lots are bought and sold, thus making the office park less likely to maintain a single vision or a well orchestrated overall plan.
The example of Ford at Fairlane is unique, in that it falls under the definition of an office park with many different tenants and lot owners, but because of Ford's history in Dearborn and the presence of the Ford World Headquarters building in Fairlane, the Ford identity is considerably more interconnected to the office park than in a typical development scenario. Because the Ford identity is inseperable from Fairlane, it has been important to Ford to maintain more control over the future development of the office park, which they do by employing an aesthetic code and offering centralized landscaping services to all tenants, allowing them to orchestrate strategic ecological planning and more substantial landscape projects.
Other reasons for the ecological and community developments at Fairlane are related to Ford's larger intended corporate image as a 'sustainable' American industrial corporation. Ford's website has an entire section titled 'good works' which describes all of their environmental and community initiatives through their products (the cars), their assembly plants, their corporate properties, and with their charitable donations. The projects at Fairlane are well publicized through the Ford website and more specifically on the Ford real estate website, especially the more visually marketable projects such as the sunflower fields, which provide the company with striking images of their headquarters building surrounded by fields of attractive flowers.
Ford Motor Company's current CEO, William Clay Ford Jr., great grandson of Henry Ford, is responsible for some of Ford's recent sustainable overhauling. He is publicly known as the Ford family environmentalist, practicer of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, folk guitar player, and quite different from previous hard-edged CEOs. A Newsweek article describes that "He has horrified many in the industry — and many at the company — by publicly blaming auto emissions for greenhouse gases causing climate change. He speaks passionately about a future with cleaner alternative fuels, recyclable cars and compostable parts."6 Ford Jr.'s personal ecological goals have filtered through all aspects of the company, resulting in the development of a Sustainability Steering Team which oversees the environmental efforts and impacts of all of Ford's products and properties. Since Ford Jr.'s tenure, the Ford Motor Company has attempted to retool its image as a 'green' company, most notably by instating the highly publicized Rouge Factory green redevelopment in collaboration with William McDonough + Partners.
Automobile industries have received very public criticism for vehicles emmisions, fuel consumption, toxic factories, and the negative impacts of industrial decentralization in the United States. Ford's efforts at Fairlane are part of a much larger picture of an American industry attempting to improve an image that has been under public scrutiny throughout its history.
The Urban and Natural Context
Fairlane in Dearborn
Examples from Fairlane
Evaluations
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