Foster + Partners’ Opens Its Energy Efficient McLaren Production Centre Which is Partially Submerged in a Green Hill

We received news this morning from Inhabitat favorite Foster + Partners that their new state of the art facility for McLaren Production Centre has officially opened. Unveiled by Prime Minister David Cameron himself, the innovative plant located in England is designed to echo the flow of a production line. The unobtrusive structure sits at the south-west corner of the production campus, set into the slight incline of a green hill.

©McLaren

McLaren Automotive road cars will call the sprawling 34,500 square meter facility home. Designed to be energy efficient, the building is partially submerged, surrounded by earth from a sloping hill.  The production line will benefit from the natural insulation, which keeps the facility cooler in the summer and warm in the humid winters. It also creates a landscape uninterrupted by a giant production warehouse, that gently curves with the natural hills to be  almost invisible from the road. Gardens and trees have also been planted around the site to further blend it in with the landscape. The soil that was excavated to construct the building was then replaced around the building and planted with trees.

The building’s roof, which is set at a low height, has an integrated rainwater collection system, which feeds the adjacent trees. Although they have yet to be installed, photovoltaic panels will line the roof, providing renewable energy to produce the automobiles inside. Fresh air moves around the interior freely and with low-energy through a displacement ventilation system.

The new facility will produce every piece of the McLaren fleet under one roof and once the assembly line starts regularly producing, one car will be completed in five days. The new submerged facility is connected to the existing campus through a subterranean walkway designed by Foster + Partners.