General Motors Technical Center

General Motors Technical Center
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Michigan State Historic Site
Aerial view of the General Motors Technical Center
Location	Bounded by 12 Mile, Mound and Chicago Rds, and Van Dyke Ave., Warren, Michigan
Coordinates	42°30′48″N 83°2′16″W
Area	600 acres (240 ha)
Built	1949–1955
Architect	Eero Saarinen; Thomas Dolliver Church
Architectural style	International Style
NRHP reference No.	00000224
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	March 27, 2000
Designated NHL	August 25, 2014

The Vehicle Engineering Center (VEC) Tower

The GM Technical Center was inaugurated in 1956 as General Motors's primary design and engineering center, located in Warren, Michigan.

In 2000 the center was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and fourteen years later it was designated a National Historic Landmark, primarily for its architecture.

History

At the concerted effort of General Motors' Vice President of Styling, Harley Earl, the corporation selected architect Eero Saarinen as the architect for the "Tech Center," with construction beginning in 1949. The original campus was completed in 1955 and ceremonially opened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on May 16, 1956. The facility cost the company approximately US$100 million at the time—over US$1 billion in 2023 dollars.

In the following decades, the number of buildings at the Tech Center increased with the massive Vehicle Engineering Center (VEC), several wind tunnels, a battery development area, and most recently a pre-production operations (PPO) building. This growth was spurred by increasing saturation of technology in its vehicles—and by General Motors' continuing centralization of engineering.

Description

The "Tech Center" is a 710-acre campus located in Warren, Michigan and includes 38 buildings designed to accommodate over 21,000 employees. The site is bounded by Van Dyke Avenue on the east, by Mound Road on the west, by Chicago Road on the north, and by 12 Mile Road on the south. The Tech Center is divided by a north-south railroad right-of-way: the western half includes research, design, and advanced engineering activities while the eastern half includes more planning, current engineering, pre-production, and service activities.

The site offers an advanced technology business atmosphere emphasizing flexibility, efficiency, innovation, quality, safety, and security. It includes 11 miles (18 km) of roads and 1.1 miles (1.8 km) of tunnels, 2 water towers as well as 2 reflecting pools one of which is at least 22-acre (89,000 m²).

West Area

• Research & Development (42.5152°N 83.0432°W / 42.5152; -83.0432 ("GM Research And Development"))
  • The Metallurgy Building
  • The Administration Building and exhibition hall
• Design Center (42.5095°N 83.0419°W / 42.5095; -83.0419 ("GM Design Center"))
• The Pool
• Sloan Engineering Buildings (North, Central, and South)
• The Central Cafeteria (42.5120°N 83.0389°W / 42.5120; -83.0389 ("GM Central Cafeteria"))
• Manufacturing Centers
  • Manufacturing A Building
  • Manufacturing B Building
• Wind Tunnels
  • Aero Lab
  • Climatic Wind Tunnel

East Area

• Cadillac Headquarters
• CCO Building (formerly Chevrolet Headquarters)
• Cole Engineering Center (formerly VEC-Vehicle Engineering Center)
• Estes Engineering Center (formerly AEC-Advanced Engineering Center, which was previously Powertrain Engineering)
• Pre-production Operations (PPO)
• Training Center
• Service Engineering Center
• After-sales Engineering

Design significance

The General Motors Technical Center building, seen here in 1956.

The Tech Center was the first major independent project of Eero Saarinen after leaving his father's firm, and proved to be foundational to his later success.

Saarinen collaborated with design consultants and artists, including Alexander Girard and Cranbrook designers Harry Bertoia, Maija Grotell, and Florence Knoll. The design integrates not only Saarinen's architecture, but also planning; civil design; landscape architecture (by Thomas Church); interior design and fine arts. Artworks include works by Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder (the fountain at the north end of the main reflecting pond), Antoine Pevsner (sculpture, The Flight of the Bird, aka Bird in Flight, at the south end of the same reflecting pond, outside the Styling Administration Building) as well as paintings by Charles Sheeler and Jimmy Ernst.

The architectural style and collaborative methods of development Saarinen practiced were used successfully in other large-scale corporate campus projects for clients including Bell Labs, IBM, and the John Deere World Headquarters. His design for the Tech Center received architectural acknowledgements beginning in 1956, when it was described as "one of the great 20th Century compositions born out of the sense of civic responsibility of a great corporation" by Max Abramovitz, and it was described as an "Industrial Versailles" by Architectural Forum. Its architectural importance was cited as the primary reason for the center's 2014 National Historic Landmark designation. The American Institute of Architects honored it in 1986 as the most outstanding architectural project of its era.

See also

• List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Macomb County, Michigan
• Canadian Technical Centre

Further reading

• Fisher, Dale (1994). Detroit: Visions of the Eagle. Grass Lake, MI: Eyry of the Eagle Publishing. ISBN 0-9615623-3-1.
• "GM Technical Center 40th Anniversary". GM.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2007. Retrieved October 3, 2006.
• Hill, Eric J. and John Gallagher (2002). AIA Detroit: The American Institute of Architects Guide to Detroit Architecture. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-3120-3.

External links

• Technical Center at GM.com
• General Motors Technical Center at Structurae
• "General Motors Technical Center Dedication Issue". General Motors Engineering Journal. 3 (3). General Motors Corporation. May–June 1956.