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| Building |
General Motors Technical Center | |||
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| Architect | Eero Saarinen |
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| Location | Warren, Michigan map | |
| Date | 1946 to 1955 timeline | |
| Building Type | corporate research laboratory | |
| Construction System | steel, aluminum, glass, glazed brick | |
| Climate | temperate | |
| Context | corporate campus | |
| Style | Modern | |
| Notes | With Smith, Hinchman and Grylls | |
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| Drawings
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| Discussion | General Motors Technical Center Commentary
“The original idea of an office block was abandoned during the planning phase. The eye-catching accent was now placed by a large fountain and silvery water tower in a central artificial lake. Five corporate departments were housed around this lake in buildings no more than three storeys high. Innovations in their design included large, enamelled metal panels, neoprene insulation strips between the façade elements and luminously colourful glazed bricks, which elevate the windowless ends of the office wings to the status of ‘pictures’ in the artistic landscape.” — Peter Gössel and Gabriele Leuthäuser. Architecture in the Twentieth Century. p232. “Constructed of steel frames filled with brick or glass, these three buildings are the first to be completed for General Motors Technical Center. The glazed ceramic sand-molded brick is used in varying tones of burnt orange and bright blue. The office building, adjoining a rectangular pool, has no movable windows: the heat absoarbing green-tinted glass, set in matte-gray enamel frames, is permanently fixed. Air conditioning and lighting fixtures are incorporated in the grid pattern of the ceilings. The dramatic rows of blue-black stacks on either side of the dynamometer building are used to exhaust engine gases.” — Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Arthur Drexler, ed. Built in the USA: Post-war Architecture. p95. “Situated on a square mile of lightly wooded countryside, this extraordinary assemblage of twenty buildings, a sizable man-made lake complete with fountains, and a handsomely modeled stainless steel-sheathed water tower has been called ‘a coordinated research town’ and ‘an industrial Versailles.’ Particularly noteworthy is the use of walls and panels of vivid colors as enlivening accents inside and out.” — Sylvia Hart Wright. Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture: From Postwar to Postmodern. p118. | |
| Resources |
Sources on General Motors Technical Center
Peter Gössel and Gabriele Leuthäuser. Architecture in the Twentieth Century. Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1991. ISBN 3-8228-0550-5. exterior, interior photos, p232, exterior photo, site plan, p233. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Arthur Drexler, ed. Built in the USA: Post-war Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1945. LC 68-57299. NA712.N45 1968. discussion p94. Toshio Nakamura, ed. Eero Saarinen. Architecture and Urbanism Extra Edition. April 1984, A+U E8404. Tokyo: A + U Publishing. Eero Saarinen. Eero Saarinen On His Work. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968. site plan drawing inverted, p31. 0 William S. Saunders. Modern ArchitectureÑPhotographs by Ezra Stoller. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Publishers, 1990. ISBN 0-8109-3816-2. exterior photo, p116, 117. A wonderful & inspiring book of beautiful photographs by a true master of architectural photography. Available at Amazon.com Sylvia Hart Wright. Sourcebook of Contemporary North American Architecture: From Postwar to Postmodern. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1989. ISBN 0-422-29190-6. LC 89-5320. NA703.W75 1989. discussion, p118.
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