Last Friday, KZF Design took home an Honorable Mention award for Interdisciplinary Design for our work on the Volvo Trucks Customer Center at the 22nd annual Cincinnati Design Awards (CDA). Honorable Mention projects are those “that you can’t always put your finger on, but you can rarely forget.”
When Volvo Trucks set out to construct a new 36,000 SF Customer Experience Center in Dublin, VA, the company wanted a space as innovative and forward-thinking as the product lines it would unveil there. Built to showcase Volvo products, innovations, and brand in a dynamic way to engage visitors, the Customer Center was part of a $38M investment in the facility where all Volvo truck models for North America are assembled.
Attached to Volvo’s largest truck manufacturing facility, the one-story, circular building is a product showroom spotlighting the complete lineup of Volvo heavy-duty truck, engine, and transmission models. The sales and marketing facility includes training and exhibit rooms, a theater-in-the-round, and an observation area for customers to watch trucks in action on the 1.2-mile Customer Experience Track. Building design evolved around a central 82-foot turntable which allows the building to be staged with new trucks and components. The turntable was key to the success of the design and its biggest engineering challenge.
The building met Volvo Trucks’ functionality requirements and managed tight site constraints. It “wows” Volvo customers and reinforces their position at the epicenter of the industry. The building’s circular shape matches the Volvo Trucks iron mark and was inspired by timeless Scandinavian design principles.
The modern, cutting-edge New River Valley facility has injected new life into the brand and new economic vitality in the western Virginia region. It has contributed to tremendous growth in a company which has gone from announcing major job layoffs in 2015 to setting production and employment records in 2018.
The annual awards banquet was held at Cincinnati’s historic Memorial Hall, and honored the best in Cincinnati’s architecture, interiors, landscape and experiential graphic design. The CDA 2018 Jurors were:
Mark Sexton, FAIA of Kreuck and Sexton Architects in Chicago, IL; Sandy Gordon, FASID and founder of Sandy Gordon Interiors in Madison, WI; Bryan Meszaros of OpenEye Global in New York, New York; Mark Dawson, FASLA, Principal with Sasaki Associates, Inc. in Boston, MA; and Eric Avner, CEO, People’s Liberty in Cincinnati, OH.
Read full coverage in the Cincinnati Business Courier here.
Read more about the Volvo Trucks Customer Center.
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