A visit to the GM Technical Center was the focus of our Tour Day event on October 19, 2024. This incredible privilege was experienced by 35 people in our sold-out event. We boarded a bus at the Cranbrook Art Museum for the ride to Warren, where we were met by GM staff who toured us around the campus for several hours. As an icon of corporate modernism, the GM campus perfectly fit the DOCO-US Tour Day theme of corporate campuses.

The tour was part of a more expansive day-long reassessment of GM Technical Center’s history and its continued stewardship, entitled General Motors Technical Center at 68: History and Preservation. Organized by the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, it included a series of talks in the morning that explored the context of the GM Tech Center. We heard from Kevin Adkisson about the Tech Center in relation to Eero Saarinen’s other work; from Natalie Morath about the history and future of the Tech Center; from Ron Rader Jr. on the restoration of Alexander Calder’s Water Ballet fountain (one of only three fountains the artist designed), and on the transformation of the Central Restaurant into the Cadillac House.

Some people stayed on at Cranbrook to tour Eero Saarinen’s early work and visit the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research’s vault and reading room to view a sampling of Saarinen’s archival material. Members of DOCO-MI proceeded to the GM Tech Center after a box lunch. Since membership was a requirement to attend the GM tour, we happily welcomed 17 new members to our Michigan chapter.

Docomomo US/Michigan is grateful to our partner, the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, and our collaborator the General Motors Design Archive & Special Collections for making this such a successful day.

To read more about this year's annual theme, click the link below.