Nobody Did Midcentury Perfection Like 1956 General Motors CURBED
Rachel Doyle
Glory, glory, hallelujah: the gorgeous midcentury office campus in Warren, Michigan that once housed the General Motors Technical Center has been named a National Historic Landmark. Designed by famed modernist Eero Saarinen and opened in 1956, the G.M. Tech Center is a midcentury office delight, what with its low, steel-and-glass or color-glazed brick buildings encircling a rectangular artificial lake. What's more, the "industrial Versailles" just north of Detroit is still totally operational; around 19,000 lucky engineers, designers, and technicians work behind its heat-absorbing green tinted glass.
glory, glory, hallelujah: The gorgeous midcentury office campus in warren, michigan that once housed the general motors technical center has been named a national historic landmark.
GM deserves enormous credit for preserving the Tech Center. Most companies would have added to the campus haphazardly, or updated the buildings for an exciting new look at some point. Or just bulldozed the place. GM has been respectful of this huge work of art.
The GM architecture of its buildings reminisce that of its vehicle architecture... beautiful and worth restoring to its original condition. I hope this building will be around for many more years as an operational historic landmark.
I love architecture ahead of its time and this is a good example. Though no one can touch Frank Lloyd Wright for being ahead of his time in architecture.
This is definitely a part of America I'd like to see us return to more often. I hate it (seldom as I actually use the word) when buildings like this are torn down for something new, and disrespected for not being actually old enough to be a landmark. I've seen a library from this era torn down to build a light rail station that really doesn't attract a lot of riders.
Back in the day GM used to build all their plants with really nice front offices.
Look at some of the historic photos of Flint, Lansing, Pontiac etc and all the long gone plants. Now it's just a square steel pole building design.
Back when people cared about aesthetics. Everything built nowadays it seems is based on economy and that's about it.
When I was a kid, many of these mid century design buildings were still prevalent, although a lot of them were starting to get tired and worn out looking (early to mid 1980's). They still looked futuristic though and much better than the square box stuff that is still commonly built today.
Silly question, but did Midcentury Art replace Art Deco? Or was there something in between Art Deco and Midcenturty Art? I'm a fan of both styles, and places like the Pan Pacific Audtiorium (gone since '89 due to fire) and GM's warren Design Center take the cake for what they offer.
Streamline Art Moderne was somewhat of a bridge between Art Deco and Mid Century Modern (think Miami Beach) There's some overlap between the first two, with Art Deco tending to have more detail, and Streamline Art Moderne being a bit sleeker. This style was broadly embraced in appliances such as refrigerators and radios of the era
Also, there was the Bauhaus movement in Germany—including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe!
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