Dyson has just opened its Technology Centre in Science Park, Singapore, and we were given a rare sneak peek inside its new labs. Security was tight and we couldn’t take any photos, so we’re publishing images supplied by Dyson. This is what you see as you enter the Centre’s lobby; a showcase of their newest products.
Walk further in and you’ll reach the breakout area, which includes a cafe as well as an open area for talks and events. If you’ve seen the pictures from our visit to Dyson HQ in Malmesbury, UK, you’ll know Dyson loves to collect engineering marvels — a Harrier Jet is parked right outside the lobby! Unfortunately, there’s no space for a fighter jet in the Technology Centre, but there is a Mini Cooper with both the Singapore and Union Jack painted on its roof.
It seems someone inside Dyson Singapore is a fan of Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was an American designer, inventor and author, who was known for reinventing the geodesic dome, creating the three-wheeled Dymaxion car, and designing the Dymaxion map along with Shoji Sadao. A molecule, with the formula C60, was named Buckminsterfullerene (or simply, ‘buckyball’) after Fuller.
The new Technology Centre has a pretty nice looking replica of a living room, called the Connected Studio, where Dyson’s connected devices can be tested as if they were functioning in the real world. This is the computer console that’s inside the Studio, not too far from the bed (wonder if engineers can take a nap there?).
A Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner being tested in the Connected Studio. The engineers also showed us how they were playing around with how a Dyson 360 Eye could (possibly) activate a Pure Cool Link once it got into proximity. Our guide told us that was the point of having the labs right next to the office, so that engineers could quickly bounce between having ideas and testing them out.
Similar to the Acoustic Labs we saw in Dyson’s previous Alexandra Technopark labs, this semi-anechoic chamber is built to minimize echoes and outside sound. The Supersonic hair dryer was tested in the earlier chamber, as well as the second generation of Dyson’s desk and floor fans. Thanks to the testing done in that previous lab, Dyson’s engineers managed to reduce the sounds the Dyson desk fan made by 75%.
While we managed to tour many of the labs in the new Technology Centre, this one was strictly off limits. The Future Labs researches new products in Dyson’s roadmap, and there are apparently 200 ‘live’ projects currently being developed here in Singapore.
Dyson was quite serious when it came to testing the Supersonic hair dryer. In the Performance Environment Lab, engineers tested 450 to 500 hair dryers, to make sure that Dyson could back up its claims that the Supersonic outperformed its competitors.
In the snazzy new Project Room, engineers can get together for discussions, write on the whiteboard walls, and even write on the glass walls. They can even use that beautiful touchscreen TV, which is a Microsoft Surface Hub. If your office has one, we envy you.
Software will be one of the key focal points here at the Singapore Technology Centre. Globally, software is the fastest growing team in Dyson, and the Singapore Centre is looking to hire even more software engineers.
The Dyson offices are completely open, and nobody gets an office. In fact, because employees aren’t assigned desks, they clear the one they were sitting in by the end of the day, and come in tomorrow completely fresh. Look up, and you’ll see the Dyson Cu-Beam LED lamp, which was designed by Jake Dyson, son of James Dyson. The Cu-Beam lamp has a unique heat pipe cooling system, which keeps the LEDs running cool. Thus, Dyson says, it expands their lifespan to an astonishing 180,000 hours — or 20 years of running continuously.