Most Architecture creates micro-factory with “everything on display” for Charge Cars

Created to manufacture Charge Cars‘ first vehicle the ’67 – an all-electric version of the 1960s Ford Mustang Fastback built using components from electric vehicle brand Arrival – the facility also acts as an office and showroom.

Charge Cars factory by MOST Architecture — Most Architecture has created a factory for electric car start-ups Charge Cars

“Charge designs and makes its unique cars in a single facility,” said Most Architecture founder Olga McMurdo. “Like an open-kitchen restaurant, everything is on display to the staff and customers.”

“So we created an environment that allows immediate access to every aspect of the process from design through to production,”. “The factory, and all of its contents, are at once an agile design and manufacturing center, a customer showroom, and a design statement.”

The facility in Stockley Close, west London, was designed around the idea of promoting a connection between Charge Cars’ clients and the engineers building and customizing the cars.

At its center is a large open workshop where the cars are built and customized. It is overlooked by various offices and meeting spaces.

The '67 by Charge Cars will be manufactured in the factory

“Our client came to us with an ambition to redefine a classic design icon using cutting-edge electric vehicle technology and to create a customer experience that engenders a visceral response to the product, and the process of creating it,” said McMurdo.

“Their space had to accommodate both the manufacturing and the design process, facilitating teamwork and recreation, testing, a showroom, and areas for customer engagement,” she continued.

“All that had to happen within one architectural volume, and so the primary challenge was to facilitate all of these activities simultaneously and symbiotically, whilst projecting a clear and coherent design statement reflecting the client’s philosophy.”

Office in a car factory — Office spaces overlook the workshop

Unlike the majority of car factories, the Charge Cars facility was designed. So that its customers can visit at any time to observe how the vehicle is designed and assembled.

“Charge wanted the customer journey to be mapped out by the design of the building,” said McMurdo.

“The customer’s access to, and experience of, the factory is an integral part of the product,” she continued.

“They have a personal relationship with the engineers that are making their car, and can see the car as it is being constructed.”

Black and white car factory — The Charge Cars factory is almost entirely black and white

Furthermore, Most Architecture designed the spaces with a stripped-back aesthetic united by a largely white and black color palette. Including a black light fixture above the building’s entrance.

“The white and the black amplify each other by contrast, representing the fusion of a laboratory and a garage. Also, the constant dynamic between research and production,” explained McMurdo.

“Using this pallet we also wanted to make an impactful design statement on entry to the building. The result was a large anamorphic light fixture, which coalesces into a Feynman diagram from a single vantage point. Becoming a composition of independent pieces.”