INSIDE the dome
The past and future converge under GM’s iconic Design Dome in Detroit. By David Linklater.
Avisit to the General Motors Design Dome is timetravelling. Take the local traffic away and suddenly, you’re in 1956.
The Dome is part of GM’s iconic Technical Center at Warren, in Detroit. It’s both a fully functional centre for the company’s global design operations and an historic landmark. Much of the centre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Masterminded by legendary GM design boss Harley Earl and penned by equally legendary architect Eero Saarinen, the Tech Center was as much a statement of GM’s brand philosophy as it was a functioning facility.
GM was one of the first American carmakers to prioritise design. It hired Earl in 1927 and set up a department to study ‘art and colour’ in its vehicles.
We can thank Harley Earl for some of the best and worst in the modern car industry. He helped create planned obsolescence with yearly model changes, exotic concept cars and of course the Corvette.
The Dome became the centrepiece of GM design. It was and is the place where all new GM products are presented in the metal (well, perhaps clay) to company executives. Careers are made and destroyed inside it.
Earl wanted a secret and very special place where GM teams could put the spotlight on future designs. Why a dome? Because the shape and indirect lighting replicate what it’s like to see a vehicle outside. Although walled areas around the facility allow designers to present their models outside as well.
Saarinen decided the Dome itself should pay homage to the car by being constructed in metal: a self-supporting structure of interlocking aluminium panels, standing 20 metres high, with a massive display space in its centre. Consider it GM’s design church. Company executives certainly consider it a spiritual place, given that every major GM vehicle since the 1957 model year has been approved there.
The Dome is revered. So it might surprise you that it was also given a huge thrashing as a location for the 2014 movie Transformers: Age of Extinction. GM has a huge hand in the franchise: Camaro has a starring role as Bumblebee and the movies are filled with the company’s vehicles.
GM supplied its Tech Center and many other facilities as locations for Age of Extinction. The office of then-global design boss Ed Welburn, overlooking the Dome, doubled as CIA digs. It’s the same office, with the same exquisite mid-century furniture, that Earl used from 1956-58.
Welburn even has a cameo as the boss of Autobot research in the Dome scenes. Over 50 other GM employees also appear in the film.
GM masterminded planned obsolescence and the Transformers Dome shoot was typically pragmatic planned damage. It was a convenient catalyst for a major refurbishment of the facility – the most significant upgrade since the introduction of some new lighting technology in 1993.
Back then, GM installed a simple nine-metre-wide lighting ring with a mass of spotlights attached. To adjust them, staff still had to climb up on ladders and manually move the individual units to achieve the correct (and crucial) lighting effect.
The 18-month renovation in 2014 involved a complete rewire, with new LED lighting on a 12-metre rig that can be remotely controlled from an iPad. Individual lights can be used to highlight tiny details such as badges and wheels, or project patterns around the vehicle.
There are screens that drop down from the ceiling, and even a projector that can put a moodenhancing image onto the domed roof to help showcase a particular model.
The Warren Tech Center is the oldest and largest of a network of GM design centres that have been linked as a global entity since 2005. There are others in the United States, Germany, Korea, China, Brazil, India and of course Australia, employing 1900 people.
Australian Michael Simcoe also succeeded Welburn as GM’s global design head last year. But no movie role yet.