GAYDON, England -- Jaguar has opened a new design studio as part of wider overhaul of Jaguar Land Rover’s UK engineering center.
The studio gives the brand’s design team access to more technology in a far bigger and more collaborative space than the brand's previous location.
The building will allow us "to design the very best cars for our customers, far into the future," Jaguar's head of design, Julian Thomson, said. Thomson succeeded Ian Callum as design chief in July.
The studio moves 52 km (20 miles) to Gaydon, central England, from its current location in Whitley, near Coventry. It is next to sister brand Land Rover's design studio.
The new Jaguar studio is part of a 500 million pound (564 million euro) overhaul of the Gaydon site, which brings together design, engineering and production purchasing for the two brands for the first time.
The idea to relocate the studio was started in 2014, when JLR was making healthy profits. In JLR announced 4,500 job cuts as part of a cost efficiency drive in a bid to return the company to profit again.
The studio's total space is 12,000 square meters, 33 percent bigger than the Whitley site, Jaguar said. The size is roughly similar to that of Land Rover's studio.
The Jaguar studio has 280 staff and has been designed to allow better collaboration between the departments, which are grouped around a central ‘heart space’ area.
The idea was to create a “campus feel,” interior design director Alister Wheelan told journalists at the opening.
“The Whitley team was spread over three buildings and two floors and it didn’t feel very collaborative. Now there’s lots of creative tension,” he said. For example now the materials and colors design team sits in the same area as interior and exterior design.
Whelan said Jaguar design staff worked with the architects to create the best space possible. “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said.
Faster design process
The two main studios have 10 clay model plates that can hold two clay models at once. Rails in the floor allow milling machines to work on both sides at the same time, ‘milling’ modeling clay into a full-size car using data supplied by computer-aided surfacing designers.
The studio has 30 milling machines, up from two in Whitley. This speeds up the design process and also allows designers to work on refining vehicles.
Jaguar said it can create cars from sketch to full size models in just two weeks in the new studio, speeding up development time. The brand employs 46 sculptors to refine the clay models after they have been machine milled.
The clay model plates allow designers to see exteriors and interiors next to each other, while models can be easily taken outside to the ‘garden’ area to view in natural light. The cars can also be viewed from three heights.
Other new equipment at the studio includes an 11-meter ‘4k’ high resolution digital video wall that can display computer renditions of future models in greater detail.
The studio also has a virtual reality ‘rig’ that enables designers and studio engineers to test ideas virtually, again speeding up development.
