Project Details
- Project Name
- General Motors Design Auditorium
- Location
-
Warren ,MI ,United States
- Architect
- SmithGroup
- Client/Owner
- General Motors Company, LLC
- Project Types
- Office
- Project Scope
- Preservation/Restoration
- Size
- 39,500 sq. feet
- Shared by
- Hanley Wood
- Project Status
- Built
2017 AIA Institute Honor Award Winner in Interior Architecture
“A place for leadership in furthering new attacks on the technological frontier”: So declared President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, feting General Motors’ new Tech Center in Warren, Mich. The showpiece of the 710-acre campus was, and remains, Eero Saarinen’s Design Auditorium, a 180-foot-diameter dome atop a short colonnaded base faced in linked aluminum sheeting. The building is a sort of surgical theater for the automotive set, allowing engineers, management, and select members of the public to examine the company’s latest products in a controlled setting.
As car culture has changed, however, the demands of presentation have changed as well, and SmithGroupJJR has restored Saarinen’s masterpiece to pristine condition while making it a more dynamic display environment for contemporary cars. New multimedia equipment—embedded invisibly in the dome and circumferential soffit—make for a more stimulating and informative experience, while an adjacent auxiliary space has been adapted into a corporate meeting room with views of the show floor, so that while they’re deciding company strategy GM execs can look right out at the goods. They can even spotlight which cars they’re discussing: The pendant lighting system, which for years could only be adjusted by hand, is now controlled from a central console that not only directs light, but can also alter its color and bring up video and audio. In a suitably nostalgic touch, the console desk is a graceful modern swoosh, a tribute to the hood ornament of a classic 1940s Cadillac.
Project Credits
Project: General Motors Design Dome, Warren, Mich.
Client: General Motors
Architect/Interior Designer: SmithGroupJJR, Detroit . Paul Urbanek, FAIA (design principal); Wayne Bills, AIA (principal-in-charge); Terry Guitar, AIA (principal architect); Mark Goyette (architect); Lori James (interior designer); Rodrigo Manriquez, Leland Curtis (lighting specialist); Edward Pfannes (senior mechanical engineer); ZY Liu (structural engineer); Dominick Pastore (project engineer); Gerard Gutierrez (designer); Ryan Dashkevicz, Matthew Seeley, Margaret Wiggins, Joe Sanchez, Gary Nelson, Andrew Bodley, Thomas Le, Justin Butts (project team)
M/E/Structural/Civil Engineer: SmithGroupJJR Landscape Architect/Lighting Designer: SmithGroupJJR
General Contractor: Roncelli AV Consultant: AVI-SPL
Size: 39,500 square feet
Cost: Withheld
To see the rest of ARCHITECT's coverage of the 2017 AIA Institute Honor Awards, click here.
Project Description
FROM THE AIA:
A large indoor viewing auditorium, part of Eero Saarinen’s legendary complex for the automotive giant, has allowed the GM Styling team to view its designs in an open space regardless of weather since 1956. The 180-foot-diameter domed space provides indirect lighting and a shadowless environment for evaluating the form and finish of the company’s vehicles.
To enhance the relevance of this landmark—which has endured for years as the primary display space for GM products as well as a large meeting space—the architects integrated new technologies and updated the original design team’s creative interventions, while remaining consistent with the original design.
An updated central lighting ring now allows for vehicles to be spotlighted, when needed, and integrated multimedia capabilities are available to abolish the solemnity required for evaluating designs and to invigorate the space with a sense of theatricality when presenting finished projects to the world. The multimedia elements are seamlessly integrated into the dome skin and a steel soffit ring. Nearby, the design of the new control desk takes its form from a 1940 Cadillac hood ornament.
To engage GM’s management more directly with the products, an existing conference room adjacent to the auditorium floor has been transformed into a fully functional boardroom faced with ultra-clear glass. With proximity and unobstructed views, corporate decisions regarding product development can be rendered in real time.
While the team was not tasked with preserving a historic structure as a museum of past accomplishments, it has nimbly evolved Saarinen’s original design into a space of continued corporate benefit.
