Introduction

Whether it’s big box chain stores or anonymous manufacturing facilities, wide, flat-faced buildings are a common sight on the route into Rochester, Minnesota, from the north. About five miles from downtown, the IBM Manufacturing & Training Facility has a similar boxy massing to other buildings on the street but has a distinctive blue facade pattern.

From the air, the vast scale of this building can start to be understood – in fact, when viewed from above, it resembles a computer chip.

IBM Rochester is still the largest IBM facility under one roof, enclosing 3.6 million square-feet on 400 acres. In this city, IBM’s frequent moniker “Big Blue” applies to both the company and the building. Commissioned in 1956 and designed by Eero Saarinen & Associates, the opening of the building in 1958 marks a key moment in IBM’s design legacy and Minnesota’s computing industry.  
 
In 1958, the complex was surrounded by rural land. Eliot Noyes, who became consulting director of design for IBM in 1956 and went on to transform all aspects of design within the corporation, framed the corporate character and purpose of IBM as help[ing] man extend his control over the environment. This mechanism of control is enacted through enclosure; in the case of IBM Rochester, the blue curtain walls’ ultra-thin membrane separates the pastoral exterior from a sterile, technical interior. In the 21st century, architectural historians highlighted the importance of vast, controlled interiors in technical space.

In his 2005 book The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space, Reinhold Martin found the same insidious power of the military industrial complex in corporate America, which he called the organizational complex. For Martin, corporate campuses are entwined with the receiving and transmitting of information through architectural style. For IBM, the Rochester campus served as a corporate advertisement. How one reads the advertisement – as indicative of IBM’s technical prowess or as a harbinger of Modernist architecture’s capitalism-fueled decline – is up to the viewer. By finding links to regional context in Saarinen’s design for IBM Rochester, this paradigm-making building can be reevaluated with the role of nature and society in mind. Re-examining the IBM Manufacturing & Training Facility from a local angle demonstrates a study of corporate Modernist architecture that casts the building as a network, rather than an object. 
 
 

Saarinen and Corporate Modernism

Productive landscapes in this area of Minnesota are rural and dotted with technical, engineered structures. The origins of Modernism as an architectural style connect in lineage to industrial, productive spaces and in form to technical, mass-produced buildings. The genealogy of Saarinen’s design for IBM Rochester is on theme: mass-produced materials enclose and create productive space. In 1913, Walter Gropius published a treatise on American industrial architecture. With seven pages of photographs that depicted grain silos, factories, and industrial architecture in places like Chicago and Minnesota, Gropius argued for the brilliance of American industrial architecture for unity of form and color, clear contrasts, and orderly articulation of parts. These ideas fueled the Modernist movement in Europe and traveled with Gropius to Harvard, where he mentored the student Eliot Noyes. In 1941, Noyes, acting in his role as the curator of industrial design at MoMA, published a competition call for “Organic Design in Home Furnishings.” Noyes described successful organic design as one that displays harmonious organization of parts within the whole, according to structure, material, and purpose. The winners of this competition were Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames, with a design for a now-famous formed-plywood chair. Later, Noyes was installed at IBM with the mandate to reimagine IBM’s products, buildings, and logo into a unified image – like a corporation of organic design. In this role at IBM, Noyes commissioned designs from a wide cast of Modernist architects, including, in 1956, Eero Saarinen & Associates. Saarinen was in the throes of a productive period that included corporate headquarters and campuses for General Motors, TWA, John Deere, and others. In 1956, Saarinen appeared on the cover of Time magazine for an article titled “The Maturing Modern,” which declared American architecture as a new leader in Modernism. Saarinen is quoted as comparing these latest corporate designs with Versailles, the Tivoli Gardens, and other distinctly non-Modern architectural icons. The ambition to connect contemporary corporate campuses to architectural marvels of antiquity marked Saarinen’s potential threat for Modernism. 
 
Saarinen’s success in the corporate world was not without detractors. Vincent Scully held the contemporaneous critical stance that Saarinen did not have a distinct architectural style but rather took influence from client and site. Scully accused Saarinen of designing a series of superficial containers for corporate clients, which he saw in opposition to high-quality Modernist architecture that was fully considered and, through its dedication to function and material, outside of changing fashions. Scully’s criticism that Saarinen’s bespoke approach to each project’s specific architectural problems was not unfounded. Saarinen often noted that each project began with a careful study of the site, context, client, and available materials. This customization was attractive to corporate clients but stood out as distinct from contemporary Modernists in the region like Minoru Yamasaki and Frank Lloyd Wright, who had identifiable architectural trademarks. Writing following Saarinen’s death in 1961, Reyner Banham remarked that Saarinen’s corporate campuses were of unprecedented quality. He then gave the left-handed compliment that Saarinen’s designs, like a good advertising agency, conferred status and improved the image of the corporate clients. These polemics indicate that Saarinen’s success in postwar corporate America was a flashpoint for the relationship between Modernism and capital. Abroad, Modernist architecture was often a tool of the state. Whether state-funded technical buildings or architecture for nationalist projects, Modernist buildings at large scale held a particular civic character overseas. Small, luxurious spaces could be state instruments, like the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, or indicators of personal wealth, like Villa Savoye, designed for the Savoye family in 1928 (and later owned by the French state). The corporate campus as a Modernist masterpiece was a new paradigm in the postwar world, and Saarinen’s designs challenged the assumption that Modernism must be noble or rarefied. 
 

IBM in Minnesota

Rochester was able to beat out other Midwest cities, including Madison, Wisconsin, to become IBM’s base of operations in the region due in part to Minnesota’s history as a computing industrial district in the midcentury. In the late 19th century, grain became a lucrative commodity along rail and river networks, and the agricultural-industrial economy centered on Minneapolis-St. Paul’s flour milling district was booming.  During the first half of the 20th century, the state saw an abundance of public-private partnerships flourish. Some corporations partnered with the University of Minnesota to research and develop new materials, and others accepted contracts from the military to bolster their own innovative research. In 1946, the founding of the influential firm Engineering Research Associates (ERA), coincided with a shift in the state from an agricultural-industrial economy to a technological-industrial economy. Computing history in America is often highlighted on the East Coast, with Philadelphia specifically tied to significant early developments in the industry. Lesser-known is the role of Minnesota in developing the first mass-produced (and shippable) computer – the model ERA 1103 – which unlocked the ability for a network of computers to be spread across the country. By 1955, the Minnesota computing boom was in full swing. Honeywell, 3M, Univac, and Control Data were operating in the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs, and along with ancillary players like UMN and financiers, created a network that supported overall growth in computing. During this time Minnesota led the industry in developing magnetic materials for use in data storage. University of Minnesota and 3M created a magnetic tape that was the basis for hard drive storage and, eventually, the physical location of cloud computing. ERA and IBM developed and refined a magnetic coating for data storage, which led to the development of the first mass produced computer, the IBM Model 650. Minnesota’s nascent, thriving industrial district resulted in a web of collaboration that IBM could tap into and influenced its decision. Rochester has also been the home of the Mayo Clinic since the 1880s. This still-expanding medical facility has brought a steady stream of visitors to the area since its inception. The town had the infrastructure and will to support another corporation to diversify the local economy. A nearby airport, network of trains and roads, and an abundance of trained technological workers solidified Rochester as the choice for IBM’s new research and production facilities. As the Minneapolis Tribune noted in 1958, Rochester had “the type of people IBM would like to employ.”  
 
This industrial district, population, and transportation networks can be understood as societal resources for IBM Rochester; the geologic and geographic condition of Minnesota can be understood as nature’s contribution to the computing industrial district in the state. Magnetic data storage, a key ingredient in IBM’s success and transition from a timeclock and tabulation machine company into a computing powerhouse, stems from magnetite, a product of iron ore. Much of the iron ore mining in the United States took place in the northern Minnesota Mesabi Range. 3M, first called Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was founded in the region to pursue and develop these natural resources. The minerals are a geological record of the ecological history of the region – a vast ocean brought deposits to the area long ago, and glaciers pushed and exposed the sediments into the dramatic geology of the Mesabi Range. The path of the glacier created a flat swath of land across Minnesota. In the southeastern part of the state, an area untouched by glaciers is a verdant rolling landscape called the Driftless Region. Rochester is located right on the edge of the Driftless, with part of the city on glacial till and part smoothed flat. As technology and economies changed, flat land emerged as useful for large-scale production facilities like computer manufacturing.  
 
 

Design and Construction of IBM Rochester 

With the appointment, by his father, of Thomas J. Watson, Jr., to the role of company president in 1950, IBM entered a new phase. Watson’s eventual reimagining of the company began in earnest in 1956, when he articulated the top-to-bottom overhaul of the company into a modern management system. Sweeping away the cult of personality instilled by his father, Watson aimed for a more horizontal organization, with autonomous divisions coordinated by a corporate managerial staff. Watson also signaled intent to move the bulk of IBM’s resources into the research, development, and marketing of computers, rather than the production of tabulating machines and processors that IBM excelled at in the first half of the 20th century. To bolster this effort, Watson called on Eliot Noyes – a friend and associate from wartime – who hired Paul Rand to redesign the logo. With carefully serifed single letters in navy blue, Rand’s redesign is thought to be the origin of IBM’s nickname “Big Blue.” Be it the logo or the rising production capacity of the company, earning it the title “Blue Chip” stock, the nickname “Big Blue” stuck for IBM in Watson Jr.’s era.  

 
In his role at IBM, Noyes sought to give the corporation a unified image that was “simply the best in modern design.” This applied to objects produced by the company, buildings created or inhabited by the company, and all visual identity aspects of IBM. Prior to Noyes’s appointment at IBM, factories, offices, storefronts, and other buildings were often leased by IBM and renovated for purpose. The purpose-built structures for IBM tended to house the central administration. With Watson overseeing a redesign of the corporate structure and investing in growth, IBM needed more space. Noyes designed the now-demolished IBM Research and Development Laboratory in Poughkeepsie, New York, and established precedent for future IBM designs. The primary design element is the architectural gesture of wrapping interior space in a pattern. In Noyes’ terms, a patterned surface that unites the exterior walls acts as the transmitter of information. The second design element is the creation and enclosure of courtyards. The courtyard design is driven by IBM corporate guidelines that employees have outside awareness while they work. At IBM Poughkeepsie, Noyes took influence from Saarinen & Associates’ recent design for General Motors (completed in 1956) by deploying a similar curtain wall system wherein neoprene gaskets grip super-thin windows and aluminum panels. By the time Noyes tapped to design IBM Rochester in 1956, a direction for architectural design at IBM was emerging. Saarinen’s design iterates on the prefabricated curtain walls and continues the theme that highly patterned, flat facades can act as an advertisement for the corporation within. While the patterns give the effect of binary signals (IBM’s specialty), the prefabricated panels indicate superior technological prowess and production powers. These messages are signaling at a low, almost subconscious, level for passersby. This idea has a relationship to the signage studied by Scott Brown, Venturi, and others in the Postmodern period, which used supergraphics to call out to customer’s eyeballs whizzing by. But rather than using text, facade designs like Noyes’s and Saarinen’s for IBM use repetition and abstract graphics to suggest, rather than shout. At IBM Rochester, there is no sign reading “IBM” affixed to the building visible from the road. Instead, a monument sign at the end of the driveway identifies the company in words, and the vast blue pattern identifies the company as endless and unknowable, packaged up like a product.

The extremely thin, panelized envelope system forms the visual signature of IBM Rochester. The architects published drawings of the details and construction photos in Progressive Architecture, touting that the 5/16” thick panels use every component of the design for maximum structural efficiency. With a 4x8 panel setting the largest module, each box is either a window or, as one critic called it, a wafer, composed of an asbestos-cement core wedged between porcelain-enameled aluminum. The pattern is alternating blue squares, a decision arrived at by testing hundreds of options.

Saarinen frequently deployed this method of testing and iteration, believing that only through systematic experimentation would the correct design logic emerge. Allegedly, the color blue had the ability to stand out in each of Minnesota’s four seasons. However, another source suggests that the blue of Minnesota’s many lakes inspired Saarinen’s selection. Locals used to driving in southwestern Minnesota may notice that the color choice and construction of the wall bear similarity to grain silos that dot the local landscape. The silos are coated in the mineral cobalt to make the container airtight, and the dark blue finish is not dissimilar from the coated panels of Big Blue. The technical wall system, arranged in a logical pattern, shares the unified appearance of a computer tower or a silo, but the connections to location and repetition suggest the potential for an open system in this architectural design. Reinhold Martin referenced Noyes’s ambition for IBM to help man extend his control over the environment in describing architecture as a medium. In Martin’s framework, IBM Rochester may be understood like a beacon or transmitter of IBM’s corporate structure. The repetition and horizontality of the pattern describes the managerial strategy of the organization. But if the pattern is derived from a local inspiration, or carries visual similarities to other nodes on location, the message transmitted by architectural design is contextual. The building may seem like a node in a larger network.  
 
 
At IBM Rochester, the modular system deployed on the facade carries an internal logic different from the building in plan, with each program enclosed in a discreet box – large for manufacturing, medium size for the cafeteria, and small for offices, labs, and classrooms. This checkerboard differed from the convention for factories and plants of the time, typically a single-block module. The design was a departure in form and in program – bringing design, research, and production under one roof (and cloaked in the same pattern) conformed to Watson’s goals for increased collaboration, horizontality, and efficiency at IBM. The checkerboard boxes in Saarinen’s design create enclosures for courtyards, giving a dose of outside awareness for employees within.

The interior space was nearly column-free and appointed with the best in modern design furnishing (per Noyes’s dictum). John Harwood’s 2011 book The Interface asserts that Noyes and IBM recast corporate architecture as a counterenvironment, organized by means of enclosure over and against the surrounding, unorganized environment. IBM Rochester’s blue curtain wall defines a counterenvironment, contrasting its technical interior with the pastoral exterior. Yet, the endless interior complements, rather than opposes, the modular, expansive arrangement of Big Blue’s modular systems in façade and in plan. During planning, the city of Rochester annexed the site and surrounding land, bringing IBM Rochester into city limits. This expansion and incorporation into the city, combined with the illusion that Big Blue could continue forever, suggests that IBM Rochester is less an object that encloses contrasting space and more a modular bit of a larger system.

Conclusion

The Big Blue design by Saarinen & Associates for IBM Rochester resembles and presaged the computers the company produces. Saarinen received signals from IBM and the site and responded with a design logic that transmits corporate dominance and expertise. As articulated by Reinhold Martin, architecture is the medium for this message. John Harwood expands on the metaphor, writing in 2011, “If the IBM building is always already an IBM computer – which, as we have seen, is an apparatus composed of both machines and operators – and vice versa, this is only possible by virtue of their shared property: IBM.” Still, architecture in this understanding is object-like. At IBM Rochester, the architectural characteristics include both hardware (construction and environment) and software (relationships and context). Considering both hardware and software as integral, architecture is no longer a corporate Modernist object, but rather a member of a network.

Sources

“IBM Picks Rochester.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), February 9, 1956.

“In Rochester, Minnesota, IBM joins the community in preserving the rural surroundings of a new prestige plant.” Architectural Forum (October 1958): 140-143.

Friedman, Alice T. “Eero Saarinen: Modern Architecture for the American Century.” Places Journal, June 2010.

Gooding, Judson. “8-Million IBM Project Fails to Face Rochester.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), March 24, 1957.

Harwood, John. The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design 1945-1976. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

Lee, David. “Rochester: 1958.” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), July 20, 1958.

Martin, Reinhold. The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).

Misa, Thomas J. Digital State: The Story of Minnesota’s Computing Industry. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

About the Author

Mary Dahlman Begley is an architectural designer, researcher, and writer living in Chicago. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has taught at South Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota. Mary holds an M.Arch from the University of Minnesota and a B.Arts in American Studies from Carleton College. She co-founded Interesting Tactics, a design collaborative, and is a member of the Institute for Linear Research, a platform for studies of remoteness. Since 2020, Mary has been conducting thematic and site-specific research supporting the Docomomo US/MN Minnesota Modern Registry.