Deere & Company Corporate HeadquartersMoline, IL
Honored with the prestigious ASLA Classic Award in 1991, Sasaki’s landscape design for the 1,600 acre Deere and Company Corporate Headquarters is considered by many to be the archetypal corporate setting. The buildings, designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen, received the AIA’s 25-Year Award in 1993. They seem to emerge from the rolling topography and rich variety of deciduous vegetation. From its inception in the late 1950s, the Deere project has served as testament to Sasaki’s philosophy of marrying land and building, and the firm’s relationship with Deere continues to this day.
Sasaki’s timeless site plan minimizes roads and parking, juxtaposed with a mostly natural landscape. There area a few highly-maintained lawns and gardens to create a setting for Saarinen’s architecture and the Deere collection of historic and modern sculpture. Two lakes serve both as a focal point of the park, offering an island setting for a Henry Moore sculpture, and with the lower lake as a reservoir for flash floods and as a heat exchange vehicle for the air conditioning system.
Sasaki Associates visits the site periodically to consult on changes to the program and plant materials. Over the years, a number of special projects have been undertaken, including the design of a Japanese garden. Five large stones from Kyoto, Japan, set in a traditional raked-gravel carpet surrounded by appropriate plantings; and the landscape design for a major addition and later new building, both by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo, Saarinen’s successor firm.
See Next Project
