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ARCADIS Giffels Partners with Ford to Re-Establish the Rouge Center

7 November 2000

ARCADIS Giffels Partners with Ford to Re-Establish the Rouge Center As 'The Icon' of Sustainable Manufacturing for the 21st Century

    SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Nov. 6 ARCADIS Giffels is the
Architect/Engineer of Record for the Ford Rouge Center project and is proud to
assist Ford in facility programming, master planning, building design, and
contract documentation for the 1.65 million square feet (sf) of buildings at
the 600-acre Rouge Site.
    ARCADIS Giffels has designed the project utilizing green architectural
practices throughout the project site to emphasize the importance placed upon
environmentally friendly facilities for the employees, as well as the
surrounding communities.  The project scope consists of a 1.09 million sf
Truck Assembly Plant, 907,000 sf Body Shop, and approximately 300,000 sf
Sequencing Center, which is part of Supplier Park.  All three of these
buildings are connected through 1,500 linear feet of an elevated enclosed body
conveyor system.  The green architecture throughout the site will allow Ford
to produce vehicles and oxygen at the same time.  Both the site and buildings
incorporate plants and materials that naturally absorb toxins, keeping in-line
with Ford's goal of sustainability.
    ARCADIS Giffels' history with Ford dates back to 1925 when structural
engineers Raymond Francis Giffels and Victor Emil Vallet, founders of the
company -- who worked at one time for Albert Kahn -- formed a partnership and
created their own company.  They soon added the services of Louis Rossetti.
Rossetti was an architect from Ford Motor Company, hired by Giffels and
Vallet, who brought expertise that would allow the firm to serve the
sophisticated design needs of the automotive industry while offering complete
design services.  The rapid growth of the automotive industry in the late
1920s was paralleled by the expansion of Giffels and Vallet, building the
foundation for a firm that was to become internationally respected for its
industrial planning and design work.  Between 1925 and 1935, ARCADIS Giffels
worked with Ford Motor Company on a series of 225 design and detail
assignments and plans for mills, a powerhouse, substations, mechanical
handling systems, production platforms, and steel mills at the Rouge Plant in
Dearborn, Michigan.  Since then ARCADIS Giffels has continued to serve the
needs of Ford Motor Company and help the Rouge Center realize its vision of
serving as the largest single industrial complex.
    The Rouge Center project was initiated in 1998 by considering viable site
opportunities to enable additional assembly plant space on the site for Ford's
use.