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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.
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Spade, Rupert. Eero Saarinen.
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York
Temko. Eero Saarinen.
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