Inside GM’s new headquarters: Modernized 1950s designs with artifacts and surprises from the American icon

One of them is a 1963 Chevrolet K20. The other is a new Silverado EV. Although the trucks are part of a temporary holiday exhibit, they are symbolic of what’s going on inside the Detroit automaker’s new global offices: the past and the present, intertwined.

GM occupies four of the building’s six office floors and has filled them with artifacts, design nods and “Easter eggs” tied to the Detroit automaker’s history.

They range from a blueprint of GM’s iconic design dome and an early map of the nearby proving ground to an interior wallpaper featuring 300 proprietary technologies and a decorative wall of cassette tapes with songs featuring the automaker’s brands, as well as playful references to executives like CEO Mary Barra and President Mark Reuss.

“Leadership asked as we helped design the space to bring in some Easter eggs and details to represent who we are at GM, you know, celebrating our culture, our history and our innovation,” Rebecca Waldmeir, GM industrial design architecture and experience manager, told CNBC during a tour of the new headquarters.

Other surprises include references to relevant Detroit streets, design influences from GM’s famous design campus in suburban Detroit, and artwork and sculptures of its products.

Aesthetics aside, GM officials say the new offices will help with collaboration and be more relevant to how the company expects its employees to work in a post-pandemic world. It will house executive offices and other corporate functions such as marketing, legal and finance.

“A corporate headquarters should really be a beacon for the company’s culture at some level,” says David Massaron, GM’s vice president of infrastructure and corporate responsibility. “Coming in here should help people understand who we want to be.”

The new headquarters marks a significant reduction in square footage for the automaker’s headquarters — from a towering complex called the Renaissance Center along the city’s riverfront to just four floors, about 200,000 square feet, in the new building.

GM’s new headquarters is less than a mile from the RenCen, as it is commonly called, which has been a symbol for the city since, ironically, Ford engine built the complex, but decided not to turn it into a headquarters in the 1970s. GM purchased the building in 1996 as its third headquarters, all in Motor City.

The RenCen is Detroit’s fortress, a 5.6 million square foot complex complete with a 700-foot-tall central tower surrounded by four 500-foot towers and two smaller adjacent towers.

The complex is notorious for being difficult to enter, exit and navigate. It was surrounded by concrete barriers for much of its existence before being redesigned around the turn of the millennium.

It has long been a kind of physical permutation of GM’s historically insular culture, which Barra has made a priority of changing during her roughly 11-year tenure as CEO.

“The RenCen was designed in a different era, in a pre-Covid era where everyone went to work five days a week and everyone went to their desk,” Massaron said. “Especially in a post-pandemic world, you need office space that people want to come to because we have options.”

GM’s roughly 50,000 U.S. employees are currently required to work in the office Tuesday through Thursday, but the rules are more flexible than before regarding location and telework.

Most of the company’s new executive offices on the building’s top floor will be open for executives to use whenever they want, Massaron said. Only four of the offices will be permanently assigned to top GM executives such as Barra and Reuss, he said.

GM declined to disclose how many employees are expected to work regularly at the new headquarters, saying attendance will fluctuate based on priorities and workflows. The company also declined to release financial details about its 15-year lease for the new headquarters.

The building complex, known as Hudson’s Detroit, is owned by a real estate company Rocket companies chairman and billionaire Dan Gilbert, who has been buying and renovating properties in Detroit for more than a decade.

In addition to the office spaces and executive floor, all of which face an open atrium, GM also plans to open a semi-public space on the building’s first floor to showcase products and host events.

Other amenities include social gathering areas and lounges, food and beverage options, and a pickleball court and recreation area.

GM’s new headquarters, still under construction, comes months after Ford’s baptism a new 2.1 million square foot global headquarters and product design and development center in nearby Dearborn, Michigan.

Ford’s new facility will include offices, design and industrial operations and an array of amenities, such as a 15,000-square-foot dining area with eight “kitchen concepts,” multiple courtyards and other upgrades.

The notable difference in size between GM and Ford’s new headquarters comes down to the automakers’ location, workforce, and office and business portfolios throughout the region.

For example, GM has a huge technology and design center spanning 710 acres in nearby Warren, Michigan. More than 24,000 employees work on that campus.

Massaron said GM did not feel it necessary to create “a city within a city” for its new headquarters because it is actually “a building within a city.”

Here’s a look inside GM’s new world headquarters: