University of Detroit Fisher Brothers Administration Center

People: Gunnar Birkerts

Date: 1966

City: Detroit

Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, photo by Rob Yallop.

The dark gray, slate-clad tower of the Fisher Brothers Administration Center rises above a broad, single-story concrete base or podium at the south entrance to the University of Detroit campus. The building is divided visually into three distinct elements: the concrete base, the four office floors of the tower, and the penthouse floor containing the executive offices and roof. The base is chamfered at opposite corners marking the entrances to the building, while the tower is chamfered at all four corners. The thin piers and dark glass are meant to give the building a vertical emphasis. The piers end abruptly above the fifth floor, and the top floor is continuously glazed with a band of dark windows uninterrupted by structure. Above this, the light-colored roof is suspended from the central service core by concrete-encased cables. The sloping beams align with the thin dark piers below and create a hipped roof form that recalls the clay-tile roofs of the many Mission-style buildings on campus.

In March 1963 the University of Detroit announced that it would construct two new buildings on campus. One building would provide laboratory and classroom space for the Biology Department while the other would serve as the university’s main administration center. The Fisher family contributed $750,000 toward completion of the administration center, which would be designed to consolidate administrative functions in a single location. The new administration center would provide approximately forty-five thousand square feet of new space and house the offices of the president, vice president and their administrative staff. Master planning and programming for the project was completed by Theodore Kurz, the university’s campus architect. The northeast corner of Livernois and Florence Streets was selected as the most suitable site for the new building because of its prominent central location adjacent to one of the campus’s main entrances.

The firm of Gunnar Birkerts and Associates was selected for the commission and the contract documents were completed in November 1964. The new building was dedicated September 29, 1966, as the Fisher Brothers Administration Center in honor of the primary benefactors. The design of the building departed from the traditional and was meant to harmonize with the existing buildings compositionally rather than stylistically. Although the building form acknowledged elements of the Mission style, the contemporary design was also meant to convey the forward-looking spirit of the institution. Additionally, the clients requested that the new administration center be the tallest building on campus. Because the top floor of the building was fully glazed and uninterrupted by columns, the idea was that at night, when the interior was illuminated, the building would give the impression of a beacon or a lighthouse.

Gunnar Birkerts was born and educated in Latvia and emigrated to the United States in 1949. After working in the offices of Eero Saarinen, Donald Grieb, and Yamasaki, Leinweber and Associates he felt he had “listened long enough” and established his own firm with Frank Straub. Together they were commissioned for several projects, including the 1300 Lafayette Apartments and the Marathon Oil Building, both in Detroit. In 1963 he parted with Straub and established Gunnar Birkerts and Associates in Birmingham, Michigan. It was also during the 1960s that he began teaching in the University of Michigan’s architecture school. Over the next three decades Birkerts designed over hundreds of buildings and was recognized with many awards. Birkerts dissolved Gunnar Birkerts and Associates in 1997 but has continued to practice to the present.