Jaguar Land Rover has opened its Advanced Product Creation Centre, one of the foremost automotive design and engineering facilities in the world.

Located discretely in the rolling Warwickshire countryside, Gaydon has been home to automotive R&D for many decades since its origins as a WW2 airbase. The project brings together design, engineering and production purchasing under one roof for the first time in a new facility that is designed to encourage collaboration throughout the entire vehicle development process.

More than 50,000 sqm of new built space for 3,500 staff accommodates the Jaguar Design Studio, offices, a site-wide restaurant, a 400-seat multipurpose hall, visitor building and other amenities. A new internal street connects these to existing buildings to foster community and a maximise potential for serendipitous interaction todrive creativity, innovation and synergies. In line with Jaguar Land Rover’s workplace standards, support of wellbeing is prominent throughout the design and through contact with nature.

The building is crowned by Europe’s largest timber roof. As well as giving warmth, the timber materiality expresses sustainability and the oversailing rooflights floods the interior with natural light. A supporting steel ‘super-grid’ accommodates the wide range of spaces within an overall structural order and correlates with the triangular geometry of the original airbase runways, thus tying the future of the site in to its past.

In delivering industry-leading facilities, the centre will be the focus of creating future autonomous, connected, electrified and shared mobility technologies. As a result this will support the company’s long-term sustainable growth to reinforce Jaguar Land Rover's status as a global brand.