Last week, in town for the 2014 Detroit Auto Show, Business Insider Senior Video Producer Will Wei and I had the chance to visit the General Motors' Technical Center.
Built in the early 1950s and designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen, the 330-acre campus is home to a design center, engineering facilities, and manufacturing centers. It's a cool place, which is why it's too bad GM didn't let us take any photos or shoot video. (They're always pretty strict, and we visited when various GM execs were there to check on the progress of yet-to-be-revealed products. So they were extra strict.)
To make sure we didn't ignore their rules while walking around the design center, we checked in with a security guard at the entrance, who slapped these stickers on the cameras on our phones:
Both cameras:
And to make sure visitors don't take the sticker off, snap some shots, then pop it back on, the stickers change color once peeled off:
Had we been bent on getting some photos (and probably destroying our relationship with GM), we could have snuck in another camera phone — they didn't search us. Same goes for GM employees, one of whom told us most value their jobs enough not to try that out.
Fortunately, there are some photos of the Technical Center on GM's website. It is a neat place:
Here's a shot of the center's dedication in 1956:
