General Motors Technical Center

The General Motors Technical Center occupies a sprawling campus in Warren, Michigan, designed by Eero Saarinen, who took over the project after his father and design partner Eliel Saarinen died in 1950, with the complex opening in 1956 as a unified research, engineering, styling and administrative campus for General Motors. Saarinen organized the campus into separate low-rise buildings arranged around a long artificial lake, each building identified by walls of glazed brick in a different saturated color, an early and influential use of color as an organizing device across a large corporate campus. The Styling Auditorium is capped by a stainless steel geodesic dome, one of the first large-scale applications of that structural system, while a slender stainless steel water tower designed by Saarinen rises beside the lake as the campus's most recognizable landmark. Contemporary critics dubbed the campus the Versailles of Industry for its scale and formal landscaping. The American Institute of Architects recognized it with its Twenty-Five Year Award in 1985, citing its enduring influence on postwar corporate campus design.