Guardian Building Up For Sale?

[Jason]

Usually when Detroit buildings pop up in non-Detroit architecture books it's Lafayette Park [[in books about Mies of course but I also have a few books about housing where it's been referenced out of the blue), the GM Tech Center, or Cranbrook, although Cranbrook is usually mentioned for its teachers and students and only sometimes for its architecture. Every once in a while Minoru Yamasaki is mentioned, but it's pretty rare. I agree with this list and off the top of my head I can't think of any projects that would be of significant interest to an international audience.

In the book for the "Transformations in Modern Architecture" moma exhibit in 1979 Detroit is pretty well represented. The College for Creative Studies building, the Ren Cen [[the front cover), one of Yamazaki's WSU buildings, Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, and 455 West Fort [[SmithGroup's old HQ) are included. The book includes hundreds of examples that were picked to illustrate what were perceived as trends/categories back then, and most of the buildings have since been forgotten. But still, the Detroit projects were well known enough at the time to be on the exhibition's radar, so that's worth something.

The brick thing is one of those random things that a tour guide probably said. Never trust tour guides, they just repeat a bunch of factoids which may or may not be true.

But anyway art deco exists outside of Architecture [[with a capital A) so books written for architects will rarely mention art deco buildings. On the other hand books about art deco will frequently mention the Guardian Building, so I think it could be considered a top example of the style, although I'd say it's towards the bottom of the top.