Long before Microsoft or Apple occupied their legendary corporate campuses, there was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. 

Completed in 1956 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014, this icon of midcentury design was celebrated modern architect Eero Saarinen’s (1910 – 1961) first major commission completed independent of his father, Eliel Saarinen, and its story offers a unique perspective on his work. 

Longtime GM designer Susan Skarsgard weaves a detailed insider’s account of the early days of General Motors, the initiation of the technical center project under Eliel Saarinen, its design and construction under Eero Saarinen, and the enthusiastic acclaim the campus received upon its opening. 

Many leading lights of midcentury modernism were involved in the project as design consultants or artists, including Harry Bertoia, Alexander Girard, Florence Knoll, and Alexander Calder. 

This lavishly illustrated account is a unique document of a landmark project, presented in photographs and architectural drawings, interviews, documents, and ephemera, many never before seen.

About the Author

Susan Skarsgard is the founder of the GM Design Archive & Special Collections. She is known internationally for her art, artist’s books, calligraphy, and commercial design work. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Eero Saarinen was born in Finland in 1910. After his family moved to the United States in 1923 Eero graduated from Yale University where he subsequently completed post-graduate work at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. This famous school of architecture and design was directed by his father Eliel and, it was here that Eero met Charles Eames and Florence Schust Knoll. The three became close friends and worked together on some of the most remarkable projects in the history of American and international design.Throughout his career Saarinen divided his time between architecture and design. He designed some of the most important post-Second World War buildings in America (the General Motors Technical Center, the MIT chapel and auditorium, the TWA Terminal at J.F.K. Airport in New York), and his objects, most of which manufactured by Knoll, are absolute icons of contemporary design. He died prematurely at the age of 51 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Published in the same style as the successful Minimum Architects series, the Minimum Design series includes books about the major figures in the field of design, creators of objects that have become a part of our daily lives. The lamp on our desk, the chair we are sitting on or the glasses we are wearing have a genius behind them to be discovered. These volumes introduce in a practical manner the personalities and the works of the world's major designers by way of an historical-critical introduction to the work and life of each individual designer. An accurate selection of the designer's most famous objects arranged in chronological order and a critique of his or her work summarising the most significant reviews published in magazines and newspapers completes the subject.

Contents: Eero Saarinen by Giampiero Bosoni; Eero Saarinen's vocation for synthesis; Catalogue of Objects; The Objects; Saarinen's thinking; Critique; Selected References.

Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) was one of the 20th century's great visionaries, both in the fields of furniture design (he created the ubiquitous Knoll "Tulip" chairs and tables, for example) and in architecture. Among his greatest accomplishments are monuments that shaped architecture in postwar America and became icons in themselves: Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport, the very sculptural and fluid TWA terminal at JFK Airport in New York, and the 630 ft (192m) high Gateway Arch of St. Louis, Missouri. Marrying curves and dynamic forms with a Modernist aesthetic, he brought a whole new dimension to architecture.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography