Ford Shutting Down its Glass House Headquarters

After more than 70 years in its iconic building in Dearborn, Michigan, Ford Motor Co. plans to tear that facility down after 2027 when it moves into a new campus a few miles away.

“We were never going to leave Dearborn. We’ve been here for 122 years,” Chairman Bill Ford said in a video released with the announcement. Still, the move out of the iconic Detroit-area building will be a major change.

The new facility will be built about three miles away, next to Ford’s tech center and vehicle proving grounds—near the campus of the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. Once finished, the four-story structure will have about 2.1 million square feet of office and meeting space, about double the 12-story structure it replaces.

“To win in this new era, we must work more closely together than ever before,” Bill Ford and Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a letter to employees. “Our new headquarters is designed to make that happen, bringing thousands of our engineering, design, and technology team members together in one collaborative space.”

In their letter, Ford and Farley say the 1950s-era buildings, known throughout the automotive world as “The Glass House,” served its purpose. But, the company now needs more flexible options that drive greater levels of collaboration.

The announcement comes more than a year after General Motors announced it will move out of its iconic Detroit offices in the Renaissance Center at the edge of downtown. Only a few blocks away, GM is moving into a former Hudson’s Department store and moving many of its people to its much larger technical center in Warren, Michigan.

As someone who has visited Ford’s world headquarters on multiple occasions, I’d describe the outgoing building as impressive but hugely dated. The boxlike steel-and-glass structure immediately announces its post-war heritage with every design choice—from the baby blue accents around the glass to the completely symmetric layouts of every space. Like many structures from that era, interior space on the upper floors is chopped into a few big offices and awkwardly situated bullpens or cubicles.

Parts of the new headquarters will open to employees in November, but the full campus will remain under development through 2027.