Honda Advanced Design Center, Pasadena, 2006

For Honda R & D, we designed a new Advanced Design Center in Pasadena. A 6,000 square foot retail space on the ground floor of a historic building in the Old Town area was transformed into design studios and conference rooms. Honda’s goal was to create a workspace environment that would support the team of ten concept car designers in the middle of a vital urban context, removed from its suburban corporate headquarters campus. The most innovative of aspect of our solution is the “cocoon,” a wall system custom designed and fabricated for this project using the same digital rapid prototyping tools that the car designers use in their work in the studio. This molded acrylic panel wall provides visual separation from the street and confidentiality while allowing daylight to enter the studio.