... (anirik_01) wrote,
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anirik_01

General Motors Technical Center

Warren, Michigan

General Motors Technical Center designed by Minoru Yamasaki and Eero Saarinen.




The "Tech Center" was designed by architect Eero Saarinen, with construction beginning in 1949. The campus was completed in 1955 and ceremonially opened by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on May 16, 1956. The facility cost the company approximately US$100,000,000 at the time. The American Institute of Architects honored it in 1986 as the most outstanding architectural project of its era.

Ну вот теперь я туда хочу. Только пишут, что посетить центр нелься, нет там экскурсий.

На одном сайте дают совет найти знакомого, который там работает, чтоб он выписал visitor pass.
Никто там не работает, случайно? А?





Bounded by 12 Mile, Mound and Chicago Rds, and Van Dyke Ave., Warren, Michigan


The General Motors Technical Center is a campus with fifteen complexes of buildings and numerous outbuildings located on an approximately 600-acre site in Warren, Michigan. Between 1949 and 1956, seven major complexes of buildings were constructed. Eero Saarinen was the architect for five, and a consultant for two, of these complexes. Additionally, Saarinen designed two of the most prominent buildings on the campus. In the second phase of construction, 1957 to 1970, Saarinen designed another building for GM. Saarinen also partnered with Thomas Church to design a high-style modernist landscape on the west side of the Technical Center.


Saarinen’s first independent work, one that brought immediate renown, was the vast General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Mich. Here Saarinen arranged five major building complexes, each for a different research study, around a 22-acre (9-hectare) reflecting pool. Strips of planted forest rimmed the 320-acre (130-hectare) site. The precision and modular rhythm of the low buildings recalls...


The twenty-two acre lake was a central element of the Tech Center and on the west side was a gigantic fountain that formed a wall of water 115 feet long and 50 feet high. A smaller decorative fountain, designed by the sculpture Alexander Calder, was placed at the northwest corner of the lake. 









 


 


GM Warren Technical Center – Original Admin. Building
Post image for GM Warren Technical Center – Original Admin. Building



GM Renaissance Center
Year Built: 1976-1981
Architect:  John Portman & Associates
Post image for GM Renaissance Center
"the Renaissance Center became the world’s largest private development with an anticipated 1971 cost of $500 million."
By 2003, GM had completed an extensive $500 million renovation of the Renaissance Center in 2003,
The renovation includes a lighted glass walkway called the “green ring” for its green lights; it circles the mezzanine to make the complex easy to navigate.
articles:
How the Renaissance Center changed the landscape of Detroit
Architectural Record
Metropolis

gmring  gmwintergarden Riverfront





http://www.cleers.org/workshop6/maptc.pdf site map


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Technical_Center

http://www.carofthecentury.com/versaille_of_industry.htm

http://criticaldetroit.org/gm-warren-technical-center/
If you ever get a chance to go on an architecture tour of GM’s Warren Technical Center and have a fondness of modern architecture you won’t regret it.
 

  1. As impressive as the spiral stair in the Research Building is, you need to see the contoured wood lay-in ceiling panels that are in modern lobby that sets the stage for the spiral stair.  Wow!
  2. The Research Building also boasts an impressive, intimate auditorium.  Actually, every major building from this time period each boast their own auditorium.  All of them are incredible…
  3. The Design Lobby is the most precisely designed space I have ever seen.  Window mullions intersect with both terrazzo floor joints and ceiling grid which in turn translate down the other wall to the pool and the hanging stair steps.   This is just the start – I could spend a couple hours taking it all in.  You might think big deal, but remember these drawings were done by hand.  Execution is also exquisite.  Can you imagine getting a contractor to put that much effort into getting things done in today’s environment.
  4. The Manufacturing Building office wings have an aluminum ceiling grid with lay-in acoustical panels.  Here again, design is not lazily approached.  Every grid intersection coordinates multiple utilities.  Typically, an intersection will contain a return air return and a sprinkler head.  Try to pull that one off on a contractor today!
  5.  
  6. GM doesn’t offer tours of the Technical Center. Unless a large group (i.e. American Institute of Architects, Society of Automotive Engineers, etc.) arranges it, it’s almost impossible to get an organized tour. If you know someone who works there (still), they can get you a visitor’s pass and escort you around some of the less restricted areas.

     




.GM doesn’t offer tours of the Technical Center. Unless a large group (i.e. American Institute of Architects, Society of Automotive Engineers, etc.) arranges it, it’s almost impossible to get an organized tour. If you know someone who works there (still), they can get you a visitor’s pass and escort you around some of the less restricted areas.



http://michiganmodern.org/

http://michiganmodern.org/architects-designers-firms/architects-and-designers/eero-saarinen/gmtechcenter/


General Motors Technical Center Historic District map can be downloaded here.

Photographs of the Technical Center from the National Register of Historic Places nomination.


Location
http://wiki.worldflicks.org/gm_tech_center.html#coords=(42.515211,-83.037629)&z=15

.


Tags: `eero saarinen, `minoru yamasaki, architecture, starchitect, travel, ~usa
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