The Central Building is distinguished from its lumbering supporting players by Hadid’s characteristically dynamic geometry- in plan, it resembles a lightning bolt, physically connecting (and metaphorically animating) the surrounding sheds. Interstitial spaces are landscaped to become contemplative courtyards. The building’s sleek horizontality is emphasised by long slits of glazing cut into its flanks (Zaha’s version of Go Faster stripes, perhaps). At its north end, a huge dark blue volume, like a whale or ship’s prow, nudges out from behind the sheds to mark the main entrance.
Visitors, management and workers alike, since everyone uses the same entrance, are greeted by a soaring glazed lobby that acts as a giant vitrine for BMWs past and present, together with a cafe and the obligatory merchandise boutique. Overhead, the car skeletons (a raw steel chassis is known as a Body in White) slide soundlessly past, drenched in cool blue light. Here you also encounter the building’s imposing concrete structure, its astonishing precision made possible by the miracle of self-compacting concrete (AR January 2004). It seems as though the technical capabilities of construction and the architectural potential of form-making, through computer visualisation, has at last caught up with and made manifest the outpourings of Hadid’s imagination, for so long widely considered unbuildable.