GM Tech Center, 1948-56
Eero Saarinen

General Motors was a company that took pride in the quality of it’s manufactured goods and Saarinen intended to depict this in the architecture as well. A series of three-story elongated structures, each organized on a five-foot module, were arranged on the 320-acre site. Many new building materials and processes were invented during the construction and design of the project.

Saarinen sought to employ new systems that GM could manufacture and maintain using their own on-site facilities, including such advents as gasketed glazing systems. The complex also features one of the earliest architectural uses of glazed brick. Ceramicist Maija Grotell, a Finnish immigrant on the faculty at Cranbrook Academy of Art, worked with Saarinen to produce the unique finish, these forty-foot surfaces “were one-color walls, rather like cards of color space in space, while the window walls between blend fairly well with nature... All the glazed walls at General Motors were of a completely non-existant building material. We got some bricks, took them to a kiln and saw what would happen if they were burned a second time with glazes, and out came a very nice result.”