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Case Study General Motors Technology Center designed by Eero Saarinen In this case study I will be focus on the General Motors Technical Center. I will talk about the owner and his intention for the project, the architect and his intention, and the construction methods use in putting the building together. Eero Saarinen was born in Kikkonummi, Finland in 1910 and died at the age of fifty-one in 1961 at the hand of a brain tumor in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Eero was the son of Eliel Saarinen, a noted and respected architect. His mother, Loja Saarinen, was a gifted sculptor, weaver, photographer, and architectural model maker. Eero grew up in a household where drawing and painting were taken very seriously, and a devotion to quality and professionalism were installed in him at an early age. He was taught that each object should be design in its next largest context. At the age of thirteen, 1923, Eero immigrated to the United States and settled in Michigan, north of Detroit, where his father administrated the Cranbrook Institute of Architectural and Design. Eero initially studied sculpture at the Academie de la Grande Chaurniere in Paris and later architecture at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating in 1934. After receiving a scholarship he traveled to Europe for two year to continue his studies. In 1936, he returned to Cranbrook and taught at the Academy of Art. He also began his career as an architect where he worked as partner in his father’s firm. Eero was married in 1939 to Lillian Swann, a sculptor, and they had two children, Eric and Susan. This marriage ended in 1953, and Eero remarried the following year to Aline Bernstein Louchrim who was an art critic. A son, Eames, was born later that year. As a person, Eero was outwardly a stocky, calm, man of informal manner and mischievous humor, but underneath he was intensely serious about architecture and seemed compulsively competitive with his own most recent designs. His wish for buildings to expressive statements established new horizon for modern architecture. He was exploratory in his thinking and committed to research on every level. His building were created with meticulous care, from the original analysis of a client’s problem to the final execution, and were sympathetically received by both the general public and his fellow architects. Eero died leaving behind numerous of project to be completed by his associates. Eero loved architecture, because he no other real interest he was always practicing it. He never wrote a book and commented only occasionally on his building and architectural philosophy. He largely initiated a trend, however, toward exploration and experiment in design-a trend that departed from the doctrinaire rectangular prisms that were characteristic of earlier phase of modern architecture. Eero mainly focused on work concerning institutional buildings for education and industry. He built one skyscraper, the CBS Headquarters in New York (1960-64), and one house in the Midwestern United States. His prizewinning Jefferson National Expansion Memorial design for Saint Lois, Missouri was completed in 1965. It is a graceful and spectacular arch of stainless steel, with a span and height of 630 feet. It convey a sense of ceremony and special place yet also one delight and ease, qualities that are present in all Eero’s works, whatever their function. The General Motors Technical Center was first independent project he worked on. In the beginning General Motor had very strong sentiment against hiring an architect. Charles Kettering, head of engineering, thought it should be a no-frills project designed in house and not terribly different from a General Motors’ factory. Earl had higher aspirations, and with the support of General Motors' president, Alfred P. Sloan, conducted a national search for an appropriate architect. That Eliel Saarinen was chosen was not surprising, since he enjoyed an international reputation and his office was located nearby, and Cranbrook might have seemed to some an appropriate model for the Technical Center. Yet the first design suggests that Earl was more interested in Eero’s abilities than Eliel’s and it contain far more of the former Community Center, Unfolding house, and the P-38 than it does of Cranbrook. With the conclusion of Second World War General Motors challenged Saarinen firm with a 20 million dollar project named General Motors Technical Center outside Detroit. When General Motors brought the project to Eero’s father, they envisioned building a technical center rather like Cranbrook. The firm worked on schemes, but the Great Depression caused the project to be delayed for three years. The project resumed with the increased force on the crest of post-war automobile sale. This time General Motors proposed a scale that exceeded the original Cranbrook model. General Motors now envisioned the development of 900-acre flat site at Warren, Michigan, and a budget of 100 million dollars. General Motors consisted of five separate staff organizationsResearch, Process Development, Engineer, Styling, and a Service Center as well as central restaurant. Since General Motors is a metalworking, a precision, and a massproduction industry, they wanted a building to express these factors. General Motors also wanted the center to express the production of the automobile. They wanted the building design based on the metal of the automobile and the construction based on the technology of the automobile age. Eero’s father, seventy-five at time, the project was too much, so thirty-eight years old Eero took full control of the project. Once Eero received control of the project, Eero became the first modern architect fortunate enough to work on a titanic scale without serious budgetary restrictions. Eero was the first of the younger Modernist to enjoy the chance to apply the principles of their pioneer predecessor to a problem of this magnitude. Eero also brought three of his own intentions to the project. He wanted to provide the best possible facilities for industrial research; to create a unified, beautiful, and human environment; and to find an appropriate architectural expression. Eero did not want the mechanical facilities have the slum-like appearance like the existing factory buildings. With color on machines to unify them the surrounding environment and with clever positioning of the buildings on the site, Eero avoided the slum-like appearance. Eero took earlier schemes, which were done by his father, and expanded it. Eero moved the administration building and put a great fountain, a 115foot-wide, fifty-foot-high wall of moving water, in its place. To create a vertical accent in the composition, he placed a 132-foot-high, stainless-steel-clad spherical shape water tower in the center of the twenty-two acre pool. Eero wanted to express each of the staff organizations prides, their own individuality, and range of activities. Eero accomplish this task in the design of staircase in the lobby. He deliberately made ornamental elements, like large-scale technological sculptures to create lovely visual experience in the lobby. Since General Motors wanted to base the design on the metal of the automobile and the construction based on the advanced technology of the automobile age, the prevalent material was steel and the prevalent construction was an assembly type method. General Motors wanted the design to spring from a conviction that just as automobile speed vastly exceeded walking speed. In response to this, Eero used steel. Like the automobile, the parts of the building were essentially put together, as on an assembly line, out of mass-produced units. Eero design strategy was strongly influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Illinois Institute of Technology, and his masterly campus. Following this example, Eero took a functionalist approach and transcends functionalism. Eero used a five-foot module system that runs through facade after façade, and within the membranes of the glass the interiors, which were column-free, are also completely modular. The ceiling, like walls and floors, and with them air conditioning, illumination, and other mechanical equipment, were integrated in a multi-dimensional, rigorously consistent structural system which creates large areas of space that may be easily adapted to the new use of scientific-technology. Maximum flexibility was also included in the building program, and Eero achieved this by using the five-foot module not only in the steel construction but also in the laboratory, heating, ventilating, and fire-protection facilities as well as to laboratory furniture, storage units, and wall partition. Surpassing Mies, Eero was the first to represent significant instillation of laminated panels, which was a complete prefabricated wall for both exterior and interior. The ceilings in the drafting rooms were the first developed completely luminous ceiling using special modular pans. With the development of the neoprene gasket weather seal, which holds fixed glass and porcelain enamel metal panels to their aluminum frames. This development contributed a lot to the building industry. Because of this development, it made windows of Eero buildings wind and waterproof and it allowed the windows to zip out whenever a building’s use changes. All of these developments have become part of the building industry and a common part of the language of modern architecture. The building I chose out of this complex is the Process Development Administration Building. This building shows Eero’s modular system. The building is two stories. The window mullions act as columns to keep the floor open or column free. Ford, Edwin R. The Details of Modern Architecture, volume 2, 1928 1988. MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass./London, England. “Saarinen, Eero.” Encyclopedia Britannica. September 20, 2000. www.brittanica.com Saarinen, Aline B.Eero Saarinen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962 Spade, Rupert. Eero Saarinen. 1971. Simon and Schuster Rockefeller Center, 630 Fifth Avenue New York, New York Temko. Eero Saarinen. 1962. George Braziller, Inc. One Park Avenue New York, New York