Name: Inside General Motors $2 Billion Future Proofed Technical Campus
Uploaded: 2024-10-25T04:00:00Z
Duration: 7 min 37 s
Description: General Motors invested nearly $2 billion to modernize its historic campus by architect Eero Saarinen. WSJ took a tour to see how GM has built a studio to make the cars of the future.

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General Motors invested nearly $2 billion to modernize its historic campus by architect Eero Saarinen. WSJ took a tour to see how GM has built a studio to make the cars of the future. Photo Illustration: MacKenzie Coffman

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General Motors invested nearly $2 billion to modernize its historic campus by architect Eero Saarinen. WSJ took a tour to see how GM has built a studio to make the cars of the future.

Inside General Motors $2 Billion Future Proofed Technical Campus

General Motors is updating one of its icons, and it's not a car, it's an office. Located in Warren Michigan, GM's iconic Tech Center opened in 1956. Now, as part of a nearly $2 billion investment, GM is adding on. Here, over 1,000 workers, sculpt clay Cadillac's and Buicks, and use VR to imagine car interiors. This is like a speed racer kinda steering wheel. With models all around the office, it was the perfect opportunity to play a game of... Is this a real car? Is that a real car? It looks real.

Looks real,

It doesn't feel real.

Yeah.

Narrator: The original campus was designed by Architect Eero Saarinen, and it changed how GM designed its cars.

It's a Willy Wonka Factory for car design.

Narrator: We took a tour with the project's leads to learn how GM designed this new building, so that its designers could make the cars of the future. GM's 710-acre Technical Campus is home to a lot of different types of work, from battery research, to automotive engineering, to car design. And the last one takes place in these three buildings, Saarinen's Design Center, the Design Dome, and the new building, Design West. Inside, the 360,000 square foot building brings together digital designers and clay sculptors.

This new building is all built around the way we work today. It's computer-based or virtual, but we still celebrate the need for a claim model of physical property because in the end, our customers, they buy a physical property.

This ethos has been central to GM's process going back decades, which is why the look of the new Design West borrows heavily from its predecessor, GM's Original Design Center. I feel like I've just walked into a "Madman" set.

Michael McBride: Yeah, it's a really cool office.

The Saarinen Building is a mid-century marvel, filled with mahogany, secret doors, lots of old buttons. You know, they don't make knobs and buttons like they used to.

No, they don't.

Narrator: And, of course, Design Studios.

We're in the original Saarinen Design Center in our Advanced Design Studio.

Narrator: This space has been in use since the 1950s, it's key feature, light, a grid of five-by-five foot lights cover the ceiling, and a line of windows flood the space with daylight.

So right now, you can see along this window, you've got designers desks, you know, back in the 1950s, you wanted a lot of natural light for the designers to be able to sketch on their physical, you know, paper.

Narrator: But when computers were brought in, that layout became a problem.

We had designers that would actually start to create their own ways to block the daylight from coming to their computer screens, so you would walk in here and you would see different arrangements of foam core board trying to block their computer screens.

And as more tech was brought into the old studios, they became overcrowded. So Design West became the solution. You're placing a building next to an iconic structure. How do you figure out what that building should be and how much space that building should take up?

We wanted to sort of make sure that the building had its own identity, and I think the outward-facing facades are a little bit more expressive, a little bit more strong, but then as it sort of turns to the Dome, it's sort of more reflective and inward-facing.

To tie the new and old spaces together, GM recreated features, like cherry wood paneling, hexagonal ceiling tiles, and glazed brick walls. At Design West Core is a massive open studio space. The windows here are bigger than in the Saarinen Studio, and the light grid, while still made of panels, has been updated to allow more control over things like brightness and color temperature. These are set to 5,000 degrees Kelvin to mimic daylight. This vehicle, that vehicle, that vehicle, the small model, the vehicle on the end, they're all silver, why?

Yeah. So look up, and you can see the stripes that are reflected in the body side of the vehicle, Silver's a good medium to see a surface. If it's a flat surface, they'll go across cleanly and they'll be tight together. As the surface changes, then so these lines will open out.

Narrator: And so their workers don't feel inclined to build little foam caves, all of the digital design work was pushed back under the mezzanine, with black ceilings to absorb light.

Michael Simcoe: But as they look past their screens, they're looking outside, they're looking through the studio, so they're seeing the creation or the validation of the products that they've been designing.

Narrator: Saarinen's Design Center siloed off each brand into its own studio, but in Design West, the team broke down those walls.

The old studios are smaller spaces, locked spaces, and so a Chevrolet and a GMC work in two different studios, they may share an architecture, but you could be solving the same problem while creating the same problem twice.

Mm, now those designers could see each other working.

Yeah.

Narrator: While GM says it's committed to clay modeling for now, this space is meant to adapt to any changes in the way cars are designed in the future.

The process can change, the process will go away like it did from the past to now, but the built environment, and the reflection, and the good places for people to work, I'm hoping that lasts.

Narrator: One structure that has lasted, Saarinen's Design Dome.

What I love about the Dome is I feel like it looks a little bit like a space ship that's about to just like take off and leave us.

Spaceship full of

Full of cars. exclusive cars, yeah.

Michael Simcoe: This Dome has been a stage where the good and the bad designs have been presented.

The Dome was designed, in part, to act as an artificial sun. Just so I understand it, the lower ring here, the darkness is to sort of prevent any additional reflection or bouncing of light, and then the Dome itself

Is the sky.

is the sky. But GM spotlights the cars to emphasize finer details.

Michael Simcoe: You know, we'll do tricks with this engineered lighting environment to make the vehicle look its best.

Hm, showing it off.

Yeah.

Narrator: With the addition of Design West, the Dome now connects the new and the old.

It's really the heart and soul, it's at the center of the whole complex.

Narrator: Since Saarinen's time, the playing field for car manufacturers has changed dramatically. In 1956, GM had the largest share of auto sales in the US, accounting for 42% of new car sales. In 2023, GM was still on top in the US, but with a share of about 17% of new car sales. The car industry is competitive and incredibly fast-paced. Is this building meant to speed up the design process in any way, and get more of those ideas out quicker?

Absolutely, we believe the space that we've designed and created here will help us move faster as a company.

And how important is moving quickly as you think about the future and the transition to electric vehicles?

I mean, it's super important. I mean, it's a race to see who's gonna win every day. The industry's very competitive, and we need to be fast.

The Office is gonna help you win that race.

Absolutely.

Narrator: When GM's Campus first opened all those years ago, it had a sign near the entrance that said, "Where Today Meets Tomorrow." The sign is gone now, but the message lives on.

How General Motors Updated Its Historic Campus for the Cars of the Future

Offices are as unique as the companies they house. This WSJ series takes viewers inside standout spaces to show the amenities–and quirks–that separate them from the rest, as designers and company executives explain the reason behind it all.  

How General Motors Updated Its Historic Campus for the Cars of the Future

Open Office

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