The General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Mich., still looks the way Eero Saarinen drew it in the 1950s: low glass-and-steel boxes set on a grid, end walls of glazed brick in saturated colors, massive man-made lakes, everything in its right place. The campus was dedicated in 1956 and has been a National Historic Landmark since 2014. As Fortune walked around on a recent site visit, it felt like a massive public high school.
Fitting in like a bright Lego set is the $900 million investment in the Battery Cell Development Center (BCDC), a massive light-gray rectangle, and the Innovation Center, which resembles a blue-and-yellow battery pack sitting on top of a historic building.
