On Monday, September 15, 2025, Ford unveiled a brand-new headquarters within its Dearborn, Michigan campus, with wider ongoing construction expected to continue well into 2027. This massive facility will house up to 4,000 people in the main building alone, but where one titan rises, another falls. With no more use for the iconic “Glass House” serving as Ford’s company headquarters for seven decades, the building is officially scheduled for demolition.
The demolition itself involves a long process of decommissioning as work gets migrated out, totaling an estimated 18 months before the building is finally shuttered. Work on a final section of the new headquarters is still ongoing, with the grand opening set for November 2025.
Named the New Ford World Headquarters, this facility is designed with open integration in mind, emphasizing a more collaborative and cross-functional workspace. It’ll serve as the main cornerstone for the greater campus area, named the Henry Ford II World Center, a name partially shared with the Glass House. While the building itself might be new, it actually sits on hallowed ground for Ford enthusiasts; its location rests on top of the former Ford Product Development Center, responsible for the creation of some of the world’s most ubiquitous automobiles (and some of Ford’s biggest flops). Vehicles like the Ford F-Series, Mustang, and Thunderbird were all penned in the Product Development Center’s campus, its history dating back to 1953. The Glass House also boasts its own rich history, of course, dating to 1956 and witnessing many of Ford’s pivotal moments.
Officially known as the Ford World Headquarters, the Glass House is likely one of the most iconic office buildings occupied by a single company, also being one of the largest. It was designed by the Chicago-based architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the International style, an architectural language first popularized in the 1930s. Unlike other office buildings within cities, the Glass House stands out as a decentralized workspace among farmlands once owned by Henry Ford, featuring a total of 3,083 windows supported by a concrete and steel structure.
It’s a building teeming with automotive history, being the site of many of Ford’s most prominent executive decisions throughout its tenure in the 20th and 21st centuries, including part of the story behind the real Ford vs. Ferrari rivalry in the 1960s. While the Glass House is certainly unique, it’s far from the only distinctive core structure that Ford fans will recognize, with another famous example being the Ford Rouge Complex, a designated historic landmark renowned for its aesthetic beauty.
Following up such a lineage is a tall order, though the company certainly kept with the openness and glass-centric theme of its departing headquarters. The New Ford Headquarters carries on the tradition of employing natural light to create a more open-air feel to the office space, effectively taking what worked with the Glass House and modernizing it for today’s workforce.
The general architectural layout of the original Glass House was relatively novel for the time, with this new facility not changing much of its original concept. Like its parent building, the new structure will utilize open, natural lighting, but also combine that with a more fluid and open workspace as well. The general layout is designed to accommodate six design studios, an entire design showroom, multiple event facilities, and 100,000 square feet of interior courtyard accessible to all employees. Moreover, vehicles can travel freely almost anywhere within the building, allowing a highly tailored experience for events like product showcases.
Overall, this will be a massive structure, at 2.1 million square feet of floor space; moreover, it’ll be a massive upgrade for Ford over the former Product Development Center — or so the press release touts. The Glass House, meanwhile, will be demolished by 2027 following its decommissioning, but Ford will retain ownership of the property and repurpose it, though the company has no plans set in stone for what might come of it as of 2025.
Ideally, this new headquarters will enable a more fluid, open, and efficient work environment — but that remains to be seen, as not every migration to a more open floor plan has been a success story. Regardless, it’s certainly a boon to have a brand-new building bristling with new technologies and capabilities to accompany the many production facilities Ford now operates around the world.