The John Deere World Headquarters (or John Deere Administration Center) is the corporate headquarters for the agricultural equipment manufacturing company John Deere (also known as Deere & Co.) in Moline, Illinois, United States. The complex consists of four structures, three of which are interconnected. Eero Saarinen designed the original two structures, namely the main and display buildings. Roche-Dinkeloo, a firm founded by Saarinen's former associates Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, designed the Deere West office building next to the main building, along with the Financial Services Building on another part of the site. The landscape, designed by Sasaki Associates, includes two lakes.
The main building, display building, and Deere West are clad with Cor-Ten weathering steel and glass. The seven-story main building is located in a ravine and is accessed by footbridges on its fourth floor, which lead east to the display building and west to Deere West. The main building and Deere West both function as office structures; the offices in Deere West are arranged around a garden atrium with glass roofs. The display building contains an auditorium with two levels, along with a display area with a sculpture mural by Alexander Girard. The John Deere Headquarters received a large amount of attention from architectural critics when it was completed. It has also received numerous awards, including the Twenty-five Year Award for architectural excellence.
Plans for the complex were devised by William Hewitt, Deere & Co.'s chief executive officer, who began looking for an architect in 1956. Hewitt hired Saarinen, whose plans were approved in 1958; Saarinen died just after construction started in 1962. The complex opened on April 20, 1964, and included provisions for connections to additional buildings in the south and west. Roche-Dinkeloo was hired in 1975 to design Deere West, which opened in 1978. The Financial Services Building was constructed on a separate portion of the site between 1979 and 1981, away from the three older buildings. Following the completion of the four buildings, Deere & Co. continued to regularly host events and exhibits. By the 21st century, the complex was no longer open to the public, though it remained Deere & Co.'s headquarters.
Site The John Deere World Headquarters is located at One John Deere Place in Moline, Illinois, United States. The campus originally spanned but over time was expanded to about . This plot was bisected by Coaltown Road (later John Deere Road), extending east to 10th Street, south to the Rock River, and north to about away from Coaltown Road. The building interiors are closed to the public, though the grounds are open seven days a week free of charge.
Landscape design The landscape design was created by the landscape architecture firm Sasaki Associates, with Hideo Sasaki as the primary designer. The landscape, which includes various hills and ravines, differs from the minimalist modern-style landscape designs of other complexes such as the Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus. Over 4,800 shrubs and 1,100 trees were planted as part of Sasaki's landscape plan. The campus includes a series of forested ravines that divide the site into lowland and highland areas. The main building sits in the bottom of one such ravine between a pair of hills, facing the Rock River valley. A Japanese rock garden is located north of the main building and is surrounded by maples and dogwoods. In addition, an oak tree near the main building has a piece of Cor-Ten weathering steel, which bears an inscription honoring Saarinen.
The complex's main entrance is via a road that passes atop one side of the main-building ravine. The road is part of a system of driveways that traverse the complex; the placement of the roads was influenced in part by how the complex's buildings appeared from the road. The roads connect with of parking lots, which are not visible from the buildings.
Two lakes sit just south of the main building, spanning a combined . The larger lake, to the south, has one hundred water jets. The lake has an island with a cast of Henry Moore's sculpture Hill Arches, the base of which is covered with sod, making the sculpture appear like it was floating. The larger lake provides cooled water that is piped into the complex's air-conditioning system, which is activated when temperatures exceeded . The water in the larger lake could also be used to extinguish fires if necessary, and the lake hosted several swans and a flock of Canada geese. The smaller lake, to the north, has Japanese carp and is fed by a stream that flows through the main-building ravine. During storms, water drains into the Rock River to the south.
Architecture The main architect of the two original buildings was Eero Saarinen & Associates; after Saarinen's death in 1961, his associates Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo oversaw their completion. Ammann & Whitney was the structural engineer, Burns & McDonnell was the complex's mechanical engineer, and Huber, Hunt & Nichols was the general contractor. The project employed several other consultants, including acoustical consultant Bolt Beranek & Newman and lighting designer Richard Kelly. Saarinen personally designed most of the furniture, including desks with built-in telephones. Some chairs were designed by Saarinen's associates Charles Eames and Warren Platner. Roche-Dinkeloo, the successor firm to Saarinen & Associates, designed the Deere West annex in 1978, for which Turner Construction was the main contractor. Roche-Dinkeloo also designed the Financial Services Building.
Because of the complex's unconventional design, tax assessors had difficulty appraising its value for taxation purposes. Joseph Lacy, a partner at Saarinen's firm, described the complex as having been "definitely designed for the people who are using it".
Exterior The main building is seven stories high; this height was necessitated by the narrowness of the ravine. It measures across. The display building, east of the main building, is a two-story structure measuring across, with a roof high. Deere West, the office building west of the main building, is three stories high, while the Financial Services Building is four stories high.
Facade
The facades include some of the first architectural applications of Cor-Ten weathering steel, and they were the first non-industrial buildings in the US to use that material. The first two buildings include of Cor-Ten steel and of other types of steel. The weathering steel was left exposed, in contrast to buildings in cities, where Cor-Ten steel was sometimes required to be insulated. The Cor-Ten steel oxidized into a brown color as it aged; the oxidation gives the buildings a natural look, since the color matches that of the adjacent trees. The beams were left unpainted because it took only a few years for the steel to oxidize, and they did not corrode further once they had oxidized. The facade has louvers (also described as sunshades) to reduce sunlight glare while also allowing the building's occupants to see outside. There are vertical steel uprights between each floor. The ground story, containing the executive offices, is surrounded by a grilled balcony.
The windows of the main building are made of three types of glass. The lower two floors use clear glass, as the facade on these stories is shaded by deep overhangs. The upper stories use reflective glass, which reflects 62% of light and 53% of solar heat. There is also one window near the lake that uses frosted glass. The windows are also tinted to further reduce glare, and each window is embedded into the Cor-Ten steel frame using neoprene gaskets. Both the gaskets and the tinted glass were variants of similar features that Saarinen's firm had previously designed for other buildings. More specifically, the tinted glass had been used on one wall of the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, while the gaskets had been used at the General Motors Technical Center. The spandrel panels between each story are made of glass and are placed between metal panels on different floors.
The auditorium of the display building, has brick walls without windows, while the rest of the display building has a similar Cor-Ten and glass facade to the main building. Deere West has a Cor-Ten and glass facade, similar to the original building. Deere West's facade is interrupted at four locations to create the impression that the building is composed of multiple pavilions, and it also has visible brick sections. The Financial Services Building has a facade of aluminum siding, set within a steel frame. Though modern in style, the facade has some architectural features that are adaptations of similar details in classical buildings, including pediments and columns. The building has pillars that rise above the roofline, creating a trellis that hides mechanical areas on the roof from view. The facade is interspersed with horizontal bands of silver, reflective-glass windows.
Footbridges The main building's entrance is through a glass-and-steel footbridge on the eastern side of the main building's fourth floor, which connects with the display building. The footbridge runs perpendicularly to the complex's access road. The presence of the eastern footbridge allowed the main building to stand isolated on the ravine's floor, without any pathways leading to it at ground level. When the main building was completed, there were plans for another footbridge leading west to additional offices; this bridge was eventually constructed in 1978. The western footbridge leads from the main building's fourth floor to Deere West's second floor, bending slightly to intersect with Deere West's main entrance.
Interior
Main building Inside, the main building spans about . Unlike in traditional buildings where the executive offices are on the top floor, the John Deere main building's executive offices are on the lower floors. There are also two basement levels with mechanical spaces and a clinic. The first floor contains a 556-seat cafeteria, which, because of the site's remoteness, was the only place to eat on campus. A private 70-seat executive dining room abuts the lake and is set slightly below the waterline of the lake. The lower stories also have a gallery where Grant Wood's paintings are displayed. On the second floor are the executive offices, which run along the perimeter of the building; the secretaries' desks are placed in the center of that floor. Due to the presence of the facade's louvers, Saarinen did not install curtains or Venetian blinds.
The upper stories have other offices and assorted conference rooms, with the offices placed along the perimeter. On typical floors, the north and south sides are divided into bays measuring wide. The interior spaces are divided into a grid of rectangles. On the north and south sides of each floor are bays extending from the facade; the center bay contains a hallway measuring across, for a total north–south width of . These bays are delineated by parallel pairs of steel columns. There are no partitions except around the central hallway and at the mechanical core on the north side of the building. Ducts and wires are concealed within a cable running down the central bay. The building is heated by two gas-fired boilers, each with a capability of , and it is cooled by a plant that uses water from the larger lake.