Designing the JLR Engine Manufacturing Centre

The 70,000m² UK manufacturing centre needed to accommodate 1,400 staff producing 300,000 engines per year. It also had to be a low-energy building with flexibility for time-critical operations and future expansion. Jaguar Land Rover wanted us to create a sustainable space with innovation, collaboration and wellbeing at its heart to serve the needs of their skilled staff and the wider community.

A flagship for sustainable design

Drawing on decades of industrial design experience, our architecture and engineering teams started by reinterpreting the traditional factory concept to create a landmark building fit for the future.

Delivering energy efficiency and future flexibility

Our vision was to deliver a space designed for user wellbeing, packed with sustainable features to maximise its adaptability for long-term use. Our philosophy was to promote collaboration, unity and pride between staff, creating a building that connected them to their colleagues, the internal environment and the surrounding landscape.

The result was a stunningly bold structure with a naturally ventilated saw-tooth profile that provides huge amounts of daylight on the factory floor through high windows that fill the building with natural light. 

We reimagined the building with clear connectivity between different areas, removing the barriers between factory floor and administration areas by designing a simple grid of modular units to create adaptable spaces within the large span structure. This conceptual approach resulted in a building that is 10 per cent smaller than originally planned. 

Our low-carbon strategy created a wide range of sustainable features including the UK’s largest roof-mounted photovoltaic array which, when all combined, offer a huge reduction in energy consumption.