Job 4807: General Motors Technical Center, Warren, MI

General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., hired Saarinen and Swanson to design this corporate campus on a flat 320-acre site north of Detroit. Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swanson were principally responsible for this initial, unbuilt scheme of 1945-1946, although Eero contributed drawings to the project. The proposal, which came in over its $20-million budget, was approved, but progress was stymied by a strike and postwar shortages of requisite buildings materials.

The 320-acre industrial research campus outside Detroit would eventually contain twenty-five buildings arranged around a rectangular pool. There are five building groups: Engineering, Research, Service, Process Development, and Styling. Each group includes a long, narrow three-story structure housing administrative offices, laboratories, and libraries. Although the complex was officially dedicated on May 16, 1956, the groups were constructed and occupied sequentially in the following order: Engineering (construction began in 1949, occupation in 1950); Research (construction began 1950, occupation in stages, 1951-55); Service (construction began 1949, occupation in stages, 1952-54); Process Development (construction began 1953, occupation 1954); and Styling (construction began 1953, occupation 1955).

Much of the furniture was designed by Saarinen, as well as by Florence Knoll and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and several interiors contained carpeting designed and woven by Marianne Strengel. The restaurant features a thirty-six-foot-long screen of bronze and gold openwork designed by Harry Bertoia. The site is ornamented with 13,000 trees and three reflecting pools. The principal pool measures 1,780 by 560 feet (about 22 acres) and contains four islands planted with willow trees, as well as a spherical stainless-steel water tower 132 feet high and a "water wall" 50 feet high and 115 feet wide. Alexander Calder designed additional fountains. Antoine Pevsner's bronze sculpture Bird in Flight is in front of the Styling Building. Saarinen worked with a team that included Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, architects and engineers; Paul S. Calkins, structural engineer; Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, acoustic consultants; Richard Kelly, exterior lighting consultant; Bryant and Detwiler, general contractor; and Thomas D. Church and Edward A. Eichstedt, landscape architects.

The General Motors Technical Center is one of the best-documented projects in the Eero Saarinen collection, consisting of 33 rolls of drawings across the job numbers, boxes of photographs, both construction and as-built, specifications, brochures, materials relating to several of the artists whose work Saarinen commissioned for the building, press information, and slides.

Job numbers for this project are scattered and relate to different periods of the project, and researchers are advised to thoroughly search Series IV of this collection for related material. Job 4503-A refers to the initial, unbuilt scheme, which was primarily designed by Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swanson. The bulk of the material relating to this project is listed with Job 4807. Other job numbers (including 5209, 5355, 5507, 5607, 5610, 5707, 5710, 6004, and 6016) concern minor additions, renovations, and changes to the building. One exception to this is Job 5520, the General Motors "House of Tomorrow".

The General Motors Technical Center is one of the best-documented projects in the Eero Saarinen collection, consisting of 33 rolls of drawings across the job numbers, boxes of photographs, both construction and as-built, specifications, brochures, materials relating to several of the artists whose work Saarinen commissioned for the building, press information, and slides.

Drawings are arranged alphabetically by set in Job 4807, eg. Engineering Group, Research Group, Styling Group, etc.