Building For Speed

The McLaren Technology Centre is as much an expression of the company as its cars are.

- Wei-Yu Wang

Wei-Yu Wang brand made famous by a clinical design approach, there is a theatrical touch to McLaren’s headquarters complex. VIPs are directed to a specific entrance at the end of a gracefully winding road. The scene on the left is that of the rolling landscape of the outskirts of Woking, a town in England not far to the southwest of London. The scene on the right is a dramatic panorama of the McLaren Technology Centre.

It is a view-filling, kidney-shaped edifice that disdains corners, fronted by sweeping glass curvature and an expansive and placid artificial lake, generously populated with fish. From directly overhead, the building and lake combine to form a perfect circle. It opened in 2004 and yet its sleekly modernist, high-tech appearance has aged little – but then again, Norman Foster’s projects tend to be timelessly futurist. The McLaren Technology Centre (or MTC for short) is yet another feather in the cap of the renowned British architect, famous for other ambitious and visionary constructions such as the HSBC building in Hong Kong and 30 St Mary Axe in London (a building better known as The Gherkin). The MTC’s original design brief called for “80% NASA, 20% Disney” and today it would not look out of place in a sci-fi movie.

It is a building of pleasingly deliberate construction. There are few extraneous details and everything seems purposefully to have its place, and in general it does. For instance, the artificial lake is part of the cooling system for the air-conditioning and wind tunnel. It is very McLaren.