Detroit — The Renaissance Center is a behemoth of a building complex. Seven towers, including the five original ones, an expansive indoor atrium, floors and floors of circular walkways and escalators. External elevators zip up and down, and the complex lords over the Detroit skyline.
It’s an icon of the brutalist style, and now GM wants to tear it down. Or worse, renovate it into something more modern and millennial. Either way, they’re already in the process of leaving.
Walking into the RenCen from the riverfront, you enter through rotating glass doors into the Wintergarden, a massive indoor atrium filled with tables and shop stalls, many of which are empty. The towers of the structure loom overhead, visible through the curved glass ceiling.
A showcase of GM cars occupies most of the first floor, past the atrium. New GM cars from all their brands, and a circular display of historic models ringing the ground floor of the main tower. Towards the city, at the other entrance, GM puts their flashiest models on display, Corvettes and the like.
The interior of the RenCen is characterized by poured concrete, the central material of architectural brutalism. Despite GM’s attempt to move away from it in their 2003 renovation, the concrete forms are still so weighty that they dominate the aesthetic of the space.
Towering pylons, circular bridges and footpaths, endless escalators, all formed from concrete. Softened, in most cases, by indoor plants which are questionably real or fake. Another brutalist hallmark, the pairing of harsh concrete with soft plant life as an exercise in extreme contrast.
The escalators take you up to the first level, then the second and third levels, all winding circular elevated footpaths with glass tiled floors. The interior structure is open air, up to the fifth floor, and easily visible as you wander around the paths.
Lobbies of the other towers spiral off from the circular footpaths. Signs for GM offices and other corporations. The lobby of the Marriott hotel, which occupies the 73-story central tower, is at the center of the third floor.
Down more winding hallways, you’ll find a People Mover terminal—another much-maligned Detroit urban renewal project. An elevated tramway connected directly to the sprawling complex.
It all has the feeling of a science fiction novel gone wrong. A projection of a future that never came to pass. An optimistic vision of what the next century would look like, something more like a spaceship than an office building.
An expansive complex built to be dynamic that instead became mired in the shallow conceits and failures of the present.
Whether they’ll admit it or not, GM’s abandonment of the RenCen has more to do with aesthetics than economics.
The RenCen is an archetypal brutalist structure, an incredibly impressive achievement. A monument to a futuristic vision now strange to modern sensibilities. Yet the formed concrete, darkly tinted glass, and rounded curvature of brutalism are out of style.
Shiny reflective glass, rectangular structures, and millennial gray floors are all the rage now. Just look at Hudson’s Detroit, the soon-to-be new home of GM. It’s all mirrored glass and sharp lines.
They’re divorcing their wife because she’s gotten older and taking up with a much younger woman. Yet they’ve never given the RenCen the chance to age well, without slapping bad plastic surgery all over it.
If they don’t tear it down, which they’re threatening to do if the state doesn’t pony up some money, they’re going to renovate it into something that it isn’t. Tear down a few towers, build out a new circular atrium with external-facing clear shiny glass in the current architectural style.
They call it “right-sizing,” but in truth simply want to minimize the structure. This is the hallmark of modern skyscraper architecture. Reflective, airy glass, hidden steel, floating up to the sky as if the building isn’t even there.
This would be the second major renovation, by the way. Once again moving the structure away from its brutalist origins. It’s incredibly short-sighted, because brutalism is very well on its way to coming back into style.
Just think of older architectural styles, like Detroit’s Guardian building. Towering masses of brick and tile, now seen as priceless and iconic, yet perceived as dated a generation after their construction.
It may seem strange, but it’s more likely that brutalism comes back in fashion than the current trends last forever. By the time the renovation is done, whatever new style they choose will already be dated.
Better to be old and distinctive. Better to maintain the original look and feel of the structure than spend billions twisting it into something that it isn’t. If anything can be learned from the last renovation, it’s pointless renovating a brutalist structure anyways. The concrete will still dominate anything else you try to hide it with.
If the problems facing the RenCen truly are economic, and more than just aesthetic concerns, then a partial demolition and renovation won’t magically make it useful anyways. Economic failures speak more to the overall condition of downtown Detroit than they do for one specific building complex.
Yet clearly there’s an economic appetite for new office buildings downtown. GM is moving just around the corner, after all.
There’s no accounting for taste, in the end. Some people like the older forms of distinctive, iconic architecture. Other people just want a new cookie-cutter house that looks like all the rest.
We know which way GM leans, but it’s a shame. Maybe if they had a better eye for style, their new cars would look as cool as the old ones do.
Bobby Mars is art director of Michigan Enjoyer. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
