General Mills Corporate Campus

A waterfall emerges from the wall of the stairway and flows underneath bridges of stainless steel grating, bounded on either side by canopy trees and dining areas.

As described by the designers:

The General Mills Corporate Campus, originally designed by S.O.M. Architects, is a statement of 1950s modernism juxtaposed against a pastoral landscape. With the acquisition of the Pillsbury Corporation, the campus needed to expand quite substantially to accommodate the influx of new employees.

Looking across the water feature and bridge towards the Borovsky.

The 35-acre site was being disturbed to add a new 324,000 square foot office building, a 138,000 square foot employee services building and a 1,750-space parking structure.

Plan of the General Mills Campus. Buildings and features in black are the new additions to campus. Looking down on the new pond system, it becomes easy to see where the system transitions from a more formal design to a more natural one. [opens in a popup window - 71KB image]

The architecture of these buildings was designed to act as a contemporary nod to the original. The landscape architect was charged with the creation of a new setting for the expansion.

The landscape architect's desire for this setting was to create the illusion that the new buildings were floating within the landscape, touching a motionless plane of water.

Formal site plantings directly adjacent to the buildings helped reinforce the architecture, while farther out an undulating natural landscape reinforces the attitude so complimentary to the site sculpture.

In the process of construction, many pieces of sculpture needed to be relocated. The landscape architect's design created a crisp, clean and organic canvas for the relocated art that was a natural extension of the existing outdoor gallery.

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