The General Motors Technical Center was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 2000, and the State Register of Historic Sites on January 17, 2002.
The summaries and excerpts are taken from the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form completed by Building Conservation Associates. The full form is available here.
DESIGN
Michigan’s strong connection between the development of Modern design and the auto industry is inextricable in the development of the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. Initial proposals for corporate facilities to meet the needs of GM’s technical staffs involved with advanced research, engineering and design projects was proposed to the GM Board by its then Chairman Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. in 1944. However, it was Harley J. Earl, the influential vice president of GM Styling (now Design) that advocated the position that the facility should be aesthetically distinctive and designed by a prominent architect. While others within the corporation believed the Technical Center should be more industrial and utilitarian in appearance, Chairman Sloan sided with Earl, who was then given the task of selecting an architect. After inquiring about several prominent architects, in late 1944 Earl selected the Michigan firm Saarinen and Swanson of Bloomfield Hills, with principals Eliel Saarinen, his son Eero Saarinen, and son-in-law Robert Swanson. By this time Eliel Saarinen had already received acclaim for his work at Cranbook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, both from the architectural design perspective and the design education perspective.
Preliminary designs for the Technical Center by Eliel Saarinen in collaboration with landscape architect Thomas Church were presented to GM in July 1945. The plan included five large groups of interconnected structures, including a six-story tower and several low buildings, some with a streamlined, expressionistic form, placed around a seven-acre irregular shaped lake.
Reaction to the design was favorable and GM entered into a formal contract to design the Technical Center on September 19, 1945. A formal groundbreaking was held on October 23, 1945, and the scale of the proposed $20 million Technical Center led Architectural Forum to dub it the largest architectural project in the United States. Clearing and grading of the site occurred, but GM halted the project and terminated the design contract in March 1946 to focus its resources on expanding automobile production capabilities to meet the great consumer demand for autos that followed the end of World War II.
In 1948, with surging automobile sales and profits, GM restarted its plans for the Technical Center. With a reappraisal of need, the $20 million complex proposed in 1944 grew to an estimated $60 million and would ultimately cost $100 million. GM again turned to Eliel Sarrinen’s architectural firm, renamed Saarinen, Saarinen and Associates in 1947 in recognition of Eero’s growing prominence and increasing role in the firm.
A new contract for the design was entered into between GM and the Saarinens on December 3, 1948. Now under the direction of Eero Saarinen, a new design for the Technical Center was presented to GM later that month. Although elements of the 1945 design remained, rather than the large, connected groups of buildings that had been the basis for the earlier design, the new design called for six distinct facilities featuring metal and glass curtain walls and colorful glazed brick end walls placed within a landscaped campus with a large rectangular lake at its center.
For the landscape design for the 326-acre site, Saarinen again worked with Thomas Church. Together, Saarinen and Church designed a high-style modernist landscape with a well-defined rectilinear plan.
The General Motors Technical Center Historic District map can be downloaded here.
Eero Saarinen on cover of Time, July 2, 1954. Note the GM Technical Center plan in the background. The cover story, The Maturing Modern, can be read here.
INNOVATIVE BUILDING TECHNOLOGY
Technical innovations were required to overcome the limitations of contemporary technology when attempting to construct modern curtain walled buildings during an early period in the development of this type of architecture. Saarinen was assited by GM itself, which had a large staff of engineers and skilled technicians, as well as existing engineering facilities. Together the architects and engineers developed innovative solutions to a number of technical problems. Of this collaboration, Saarinen stated: “One of the things we are proudest of is that, working together with General Motors, we developed many ‘firsts’ in the building industry.” (Architectural Forum, December 1956, 28)
Among the most innovative building techniques employed at the Technical Center were rubber mountings, or gaskets, used to make the seals around the glazed and porcelain enameled steel panels walls weather tight. First developed by GM for sealing automobile windshields, the neoprene rubber gaskets were adapted for architectural use. Adaptation of technology developed by the GM Spark Plug Division lead to the glazing compound to enable the brightly colored glazed brick retain their color, with bricks made in special kilns on site. The GM Styling staff assisted in the development of the first completely luminous ceiling through the design of modular molded plastic pans that allowed no reflections or shadows to be produced. These ceiling systems were installed in the Styling staff’s drafting studios to assist in the design of new automobiles.
Independent of the GM Engineers and designers, the architects and engineers working on the Technical Center developed the prefabricated aluminum extrusion frame used in the curtain wall system that would become a common building technique.
The GM Technical Center set the standard for corporate headquarters showcased in a designed campus or garden setting. Those in Michigan designed and built during the mid-century modern period include:
- Ford Motor Company headquarters, known as the Glass House, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, in Dearborn
- Upjohn headquarters, 1961, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 7000 Portage Road (corner of Portage Road and Bishop, three miles south of I-94), Portage
- Herman Miller headquarters, 1958, George Nelson and Gordon Chadwick, 1969,1970 addition, A. Quincy Jones, 8500 Byron Road (northwest corner of Byron Road. and M-21), Zeeland
CONSTRUCTION OF THE TECHNICAL CENTER
The initial period of construction of the Technical Center was 1949-56. Because Saarinen and Associates was a relatively small design-orientated firm, the construction phase required the involvement of the Detroit firm of Smith, Hinchman and Grylls (SHG) (now SmithGroup) as project architect-engineer. SHG produced construction drawings and oversaw the general contractor, the Detroit firm Bryant and Detwiler.
OPENING CEREMONY
The General Motors Technical Center officially opened in 1956 with more than five thousand people attending the dedication ceremony.
This was the souvenir guide to the Technical Center that was produced for the dedication ceremony. A downloadable PDF of the guide is available here.
General Motors published this pamphlet for the Technical Center dedication in May 1956. downloadable PDF of the pamphlet is available here.
SAMPLING OF PRESS COVERAGE
The Technical Center was described as Eero Saarinen’s masterpiece on the cover of the November 1951 issue of Architectural Forum: The Magazine of Building, which can be downloaded here.
“Architecture of the Future, GM Constructs a ‘Versailles of Industry’”, LIFE Magazine, May 1956.
“Design in Detroit”, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN, October 1955 (the entire issue was dedicated to the new profession of automobile design, but addressed the new GM Technical Center):
“The number one architectural event in Detroit is the spectacular new General Motors Technology Center, covering a mile-square plain a dozen miles north of the city. It is architecture on unprecedented scale – actually a complete research town where each of the five major GM research functions has its own complex of buildings, pools, landscaped squares and gardens. The 17 individual structures, low and generously spaced, surround a 1780 ft. lake and are encircled by drives and shaded parking areas. Final touches are just being put on the Styling Section – the cornerstone of a $100 million project that has been underway for a decade.
The Technical Center, designed by Saarinen, Saarinen & Associates of nearby Bloomfield Hills, is an integrated interpretation of a great industry: the crisp building forms and precise detail of the glass, steel, aluminum and enamel facades convey the spirit of technology and the machine; the brilliant glazed brick end walls in nine gala colors are a reminder of craft and the skill of the hand. In industrial buildings like the Tech Center there is a significant new dimension to design-for-industry: when business is designing products to improve the life and beauty of its own operation, it expresses itself proudly and boldly in the unified language of art.”
The lead-off sentences of the editorial inside this 1955 INDUSTRIAL DESIGN magazine proclaims Detroit as the design capital of the USA:
“Detroit is the center of the biggest, liveliest and most adored consumer industry in the country, and perhaps the world. In many senses, Detroit is also the design capital of the U.S.A.”
“What’s Good Enough for General Motors: Interiors of the Styling Building in GM’s Technical Center,” INTERIORS, 1957.
“GM’s Tech Center still inspiring after more than 50 years,” Crain’s Detroit Business, May 11, 2008.
“Our Bauhaus,” TIME magazine, May 5, 1984.
See the links below for further reading on the General Motors Technical Center.
Photographs of the Technical Center from the National Register of Historic Places nomination.
National Register of Historic Places registration form
Ed Welburn, GM’s Vice President of Global Design, and Reed Kroloff, Director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, talk about the life of Eero Saarinen in this video.
1956, GM Opens Its United States Technical Center
GM’s Design Studios Move to the Technical Center
GM Technical Center 40th Anniversary (interesting facts about the GM Technical Center)
The LIFE archive on Google Images has many great photos of the Technical Center.
This is a wonderful web site; congratulations for your work in furthering the work of the Saarinen architectural team.
Great article and photos!