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    Compuware

    By Chili Davis
    Sep 7, '06 10:12 PM EST

    Compuware World Headquarters is located at 1 Campus Martius, in downtown Detroit, Michigan. It was constructed in 2000, and finished in 2003. It stands at 18 floors in height, 16 above-ground, and 2 below-ground.
    The high-rise is used as an office building, a restaurant, retail space for Compuware, and has a fitness center inside, as well as an atrium.
    The building was constructed in the late-modernist architectural style, using glass, granite, and limestone as its main materials.



    This building is the headquarters of the largest compuwater hardware company in Michigan, and one of the largest in the nation.
    Connected to this building is a 45-meter tall, 12-story (2 underground floors), 2,200-space parking garage attached to it.
    The top two floors (Floors 15 and 16) of this building are purely mechanical in usage.
    The 14th floor of this building includes an observation deck that rings the entire floor.
    Michigan's only Hard Rock Cafe occupies a large part of the retail space on the ground floor.
    The building contains a full-height atrium with an indoor waterfall and water scuplture as its center focal point.
    The building has the ability to be expanded by 350,000 square feet to the north by filling in the missing "wedge" in the back of the building.



    The building's water feature was designed by WET Design, the same people who designed the fountains at Bellagio and the Winter Olympic cauldron. It features fifteen glass "kites" and, at more than 14 stories tall, represents the largest indoor, hanging water feature in the world.
    The building has 280,000 square feet of glass.
    A Hard Rock Cafe was opened in late 2003 on the dining level.
    Phase II of this building (when demand warrants its construction) will be a 325,000 square feet addition to the back of the building to fill in the missing wedge.
    The entire 14th floor includes an outdoor observation deck around the interior.
    Like numerous buildings in the Western world, this one does not include a labelled 13th floor.
    The top two floors, (15 and 16) house mechanical services exclusively.



     
    • 12 Comments

    • maya mcdifference

      please don't take pictures that make my home town look worse. this building doesn't do anything for detroit.

      Sep 7, 06 11:17 pm  · 
       · 
      brian buchalski

      wait...isn't that where hudson's used to be? i must be getting old.

      Sep 7, 06 11:19 pm  · 
       · 
      brian buchalski

      head a couple blocks north...



      ...this is where you need to be

      see...i love pictures too!

      Sep 7, 06 11:24 pm  · 
       · 
      maya mcdifference

      thanks puddles, that's much better. i only wish there were more places like this back home.

      Sep 7, 06 11:42 pm  · 
       · 
      deloozer

      don't go to oslo if you want to meet people who are actually live in the city of detroit... mostly oakland county yuppies without a clue. read “I’m So Bad, I Party in Detroit” by Jerry Herron in the Shrinking Cities text
      http://www.shrinkingcities.com/

      i will spare you the cliche photos of detroit's decay, but you can go here http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=8550 to look at pretty pictures of some of detroit's more notable architecture

      Sep 7, 06 11:53 pm  · 
       · 
      maya mcdifference

      thanks de-"i'm too cool to party in detroit"-loser. so where do you go? novi? royal oak? fyi - none of my friends who go to oslo are from oakland county.

      your positivity is truly inspiring. too bad these great works of architecture are few and far between.

      Sep 8, 06 12:11 am  · 
       · 
      deloozer

      Cool. I am glad you caught on to the loser pun. I agree; it is sad that are not more notable works in Detroit, but allowing outsiders to have a glimpse at some of the better ones may leave them with a better impression of the city, and maybe even prompt a visit..?

      I live in southwest Detroit. I am suprised to hear you are from Detroit because most people who have grown up in the city are immensely proud of it, despite its faults. I am sorry that you had to leave, but that does not mean you should speak negatively of the city and dissuade others.

      I don't care about your friends. I really doubt they typify the city's demographic.

      "To fully appreciate the voids left in Detroit, we examined the weekly population surges, looking specifically at the professional community. While 50,000 people work in Detroit, less than 5,000 actually live in the greater downtown. We then looked at the population surges specific to particular event. Even with dramatic increases for the annual auto show or Thanksgiving Day parade, or the staccato surges felt at the ten football or eighty-two baseball home games, the attendees ultimately leave the city."
      ( http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/charrette/detroitdowntown2002.pdf )

      The surges resulting from events are also akin to the clubs and restaurants downtown (I've worked in more than a few of them.)

      Perhaps you are out of touch with Detroit because of you are living in New York? I would suggest you first, STFU, and then second, familiarize yourself with your "hometown."

      Also, I am happy to have inspired you.

      Sep 8, 06 2:17 am  · 
       · 
      Chili Davis

      While the architecture of the Compuware building can be debated, the life it brings to the downtown area is factual. Visit Campus Martius Park any day of the week and you will see downtown Detroit full of life. For some great pics of Detroit decay, you can visit one of my highly favored blogs, dETROITfUNK.

      Sep 8, 06 8:02 am  · 
       · 
      erasmus

      mr deloozer,
      detroit's situation is far from ideal, but at least people are going into the city. while it may be difficult to admit, detroit will never pull itself out of its present state unless yuppies from oakland county venture into the city once in a while and spend some money. hell, maybe some of those people will even invest in the area. its current demographic may have the spirit, but they lack the recources to do anything but let the city sink further into decay.

      also, many people may be proud of detroit as their place of birth, but that does not apply to everyone. michigan as a state is going nowhere economicall, largely because (almost) anyone who has an education leaves as soon as they get the chance, myself included. detroit is a wasteland. if you stay you will get stuck and never live the life you might have elsewhere. i did not realize the opportunities outside of michigan, and this change has made me incredibly more happy that i used to be and i am sure shaybug will agree.

      i admire your dedication to city and hope you make your little corner of detroit a place people want to live, but do not shun outsiders because they are the only people that will make that happen. also, get out of the city a little and discover how thriving cities operate. it might give you some clues on how to fix detroit.

      chili - your posts are elementary and uninspired... you are not doing any service to a school that could use a hand improving its image. please do better.

      Sep 8, 06 4:55 pm  · 
       · 
      maya mcdifference

      howdy deloozer

      your elitist attitude bores me, your unwarranted assumptions sadden me. you have no clue who i am, so lay off the uninformed generalizations. there's absolutely nothing wrong with a desire for more energy, opportunity, and diversity in a city. everybody congratulated me when i left detroit with good reason. i moved to nyc three weeks ago, worked my ass off to get where i'm at today, and i'm thrilled to immerse myself in new cultures and attitudes. good to hear you like detroit...stay there...we don't need ignorant people like you here. the passion, the energy, the diversity i find in other places of the world are truly invigorating, but that's just one girl's opinion. yes, there are people who love detroit but the power of independent thinking is a glorious thing and i deserve the right to express it. i'm certainly not saying detroit is the worst place to live, i'm saying there's more out there - i would recommend traveling more and you'll see what i mean. detroit is hands-down the best thing about southeastern michigan, but that's not saying much. thanks for the advice, but i have familiarized myself with detroit having lived there and i'm still entitled to my own opinion: there are far better places to live. living in a place where the typical diet was macdonald's and beer (for breakfast), living on 8 mile for several years exposed me to a lot of the "inside" culture and no, i didn't do it because i thought it was "cool"...i did it because i got a lot of space at a hella cool price. it wasn't "glamorous" but i had to make ends meet. yes, i've done the reading and yes, i've listened to many a lecture about the wonder that is detroit. certainly it has a lot of meaning to people who have generations of history there, connections to the city at its peak. my parents were immigrants to this country so no, i have no ancestral connection for detroit. so i've lived there for almost 28 years, waited around for things to happen and got tired of all the promises...life is not long enough to wait for something to happen, so i figured i'd make it happen on my own.

      by the way, i'm sincerely flattered you decided to do research on me ;)

      Sep 9, 06 1:00 am  · 
       · 
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