Currently under construction in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, DJI’s new headquarters is so sci-fi that a video of it looks just like a movie trailer.
The company behind the world’s most popular consumer drones — among them the Mavic Air, Mavic Pro, and Phantom 4 Pro — has teamed up with Foster and Partners to create a design that “defies the traditional idea of office space to form a creative community in the sky.”
When you consider that Foster and Partners deigned Apple’s so-called “spaceship” campus, the sci-fi description makes even more sense. The video showcasing the design, which comes complete with a dramatic soundtrack, features a DJI helicopter on a moving platform, a bunch of flashy cars (belonging to DJI executives?), and, of course, lots of drones, many of which we see buzzing out of the bottom of a skybridge that connects the site’s two, mainly glass, buildings. It all looks very cool indeed.
According to the architect, the construction will combine research and development (R&D) spaces with office space and other areas for public functions.
Floors will be arranged “in floating volumes cantilevered from central cores by large steel megatrusses, creating large, column-free spaces throughout, with unique quadruple-height drone flight testing labs.”
Besides putting each new drone design through its paces, workers will also be able to enjoy a range of facilities outside of work time, including state-of-the-art gymnasiums and “robot fighting rings.”
And just like Apple’s new campus, DJI’s site will include a theater where the company will publicly unveil its future drones, along with any other devices that it releases.
Members of the public will be able to enter the first floor of one of the two buildings to enjoy an exhibition showcasing DJI’s latest products, which besides drones currently include first-person-view drone goggles and camera stabilization devices.
Tech campuses
DJI’s striking design is precisely what you’d expect from a leading tech company building a new headquarters. Besides Apple’s campus, Facebook also has a beautifully designed base in Silicon Valley, California, while Amazon recently opened its “Spheres” space — part office complex, part rainforest — in downtown Seattle, Washington.
In the U.K., meanwhile, Google is currently building its “landscraper” campus in London, a structure so called because it’s far longer than it is tall.
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