General Mills Corporate Campus

The outdoor dining terrace, nestled between the new buildings, fronts on a new pond.

Project Details

• Project Name: General Mills Corporate Campus - Golden Valley, MN
• Client: General Mills
• Project Type: Master Plan/Site Design
• Principal Designer/s: Tom Oslund, Tadd Kreun
• Design Team: oslund.and.assoc.
• Contractor/s: Mcgough Construction
• Date of completion of project: 2003
• Location of site: Golden Valley, Minnesota, USA
• Site Area: 35 acres

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.

At twilight, the exterior patio space and new building appear to float on a motionless plane of water.

A band of Mexican beach pebbles cleanly frames the architecture's reflection in the newly created pond.

Clean spatial arrangement and use of glass curtain walls allow the dining terrace and the interior dining room to function as one space.

Places for employee respite and interaction, as well as large gatherings were a strong desire of the client. In response, two courtyards on two different levels were designed by the landscape architect to act as reflections of each other and address the programmatic needs of the site.

The new dining terrace serves as a popular lunchtime destination for General Mills employees.

The ground plane of the upper courtyard is manicured turf, edged with planting beds that have been created to save existing trees and as locations for the site sculpture.

In the center of the courtyard, a linear band of Siberian irises, broken by bands of Bluestone, marches towards the edge of the space -- dying into the glass and metal facade of a new two-story link between office buildings.

The upper story is a pedestrian link, while the lower story contains service and mechanical uses.

Bands of Siberian irises and Mexican beach pebbles draw the eye into the upper courtyard.

Fall on the dining terrace with views across the pond into the pastoral surroundings.

The lower courtyard - on the opposite side of the two-story link - is a mirror image of the upper courtyard.

The lower bluestone terrace acts as an outdoor dining place for employees, as well as a gathering space for larger events.

Mirroring the band of Siberian irises is a channel of moving water, which emerges from the lower story of the link as a waterfall.

Stainless steel bridges cross over the water feature, mirroring the bands of bluestone above. The water is lined on each side with Honey locust trees.

The water channel then feeds into a large pond, where its trajectory is reinforced with underwater fountains creating a strong linear band of bubbles moving into the pond.

Borovsky's "Man With A Briefcase" encompasses the foreground as the new pond, dining terrace and buildings finish the composition.

The pond and the landform surrounding it have been delicately manipulated and planted to enhance the simplicity of the site.

A land bridge was designed to act as the break point between the formal and the informal landscape. On the interior side of the bridge is a formal pond, pristine and sculpted.

On the exterior is the stormwater treatment portion of the water body with natural edges and native plant materials best suited for cleaning site run-off.

This new picturesque landscape is a pleasure to view from the executive offices, the pedestrian link, or the dining terrace.

Views of the land bridge

A land bridge acts as the break point between the formal and the informal landscape.

A more formal pond on the near side contrasts with the storm-water treatment portion of the water body on the far side, edged with native plants best suited for cleaning site run-off.

The delicately manipulated water feature pond transitions from a formal reinforcement of the modernist architecture to a more undulating, picturesque landscape that elegantly compliments General Mills' extensive collection of sculpture on site.

Credits

• Text by David Motzenbecker
• Photographs by George Heinrich and Tadd Kreun
• Compiled by Suprio Bhattacharjee