Eero Saarinen (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈeːro ˈsɑːrinen]) (August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.[1]
Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father, Eliel Saarinen.[2] They emigrated to the United States of America in 1923, when Eero was thirteen.[3] He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father was a teacher at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and he took courses in sculpture and furniture design there. He had a close relationship with fellow students Charles and Ray Eames, and became good friends with Florence Knoll (née Schust).
Beginning in September 1929, he studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France.[1] He then went on to study at the Yale School of Architecture, completing his studies in 1934. Subsequently, he toured Europe and North Africa for a year and returned for a year to his native Finland, after which he returned to Cranbrook to work for his father and teach at the academy. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1940. Saarinen was recruited by his friend, who was also an architect, to join the military service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Saarinen was assigned to draw illustrations for bomb disassembly manuals and to provide designs for the Situation Room in the White House.[4] Saarinen worked full time for the OSS until 1944.[1] After his father's death in 1950, Saarinen founded his own architect's office, "Eero Saarinen and Associates". Eero Saarinen died of a brain tumor in 1961 at the age of 51.
He had two children from his first marriage, Eric and Susan. Following his divorce from the sculptor Lilian Swann Saarinen, his first wife, in 1954, Saarinen married Aline Bernstein Louchheim (March 25, 1914 – July 13, 1972), an art critic at The New York Times. They had a son, Eames, named after his collaborator Charles Eames.
Saarinen first received critical recognition, while still working for his father, for a chair designed together with Charles Eames for the "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition in 1940, for which they received first prize. The "Tulip Chair", like all other Saarinen chairs, was taken into production by the Knoll furniture company, founded by Hans Knoll, who married Saarinen family friend Florence (Schust) Knoll. Further attention came also while Saarinen was still working for his father, when he took first prize in the 1948 competition for the design of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, not completed until the 1960s. The competition award was mistakenly sent to his father. He designed furniture with organic architecture.
During his long association with Knoll he designed many important pieces of furniture including the "Grasshopper" lounge chair and ottoman (1946), the "Womb" chair and ottoman (1948), the "Womb" settee (1950), side and arm chairs (1948–1950), and his most famous "Tulip" or "Pedestal" group (1956), which featured side and arm chairs, dining, coffee and side tables, as well as a stool. All of these designs were highly successful except for the "Grasshopper" lounge chair, which, although in production through 1965, was not a big success.
Saarinen's Gateway Arch in St. Louis
One of Saarinen's earliest works to receive international acclaim is the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois (1940). The first major work by Saarinen, in collaboration with his father, was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It follows the rationalist design Miesian style: incorporating steel and glass, but with the added accent of panels in two shades of blue. The GM technical center was constructed in 1956, with Saarinen using models. These models allowed him to share his ideas with others, and gather input from other professionals. With the success of the scheme, Saarinen was then invited by other major American corporations to design their new headquarters: these included John Deere, IBM, and CBS. Despite their rationality, however, the interiors usually contained more dramatic sweeping staircases, as well as furniture designed by Saarinen, such as the Pedestal Series. In the 1950s he began to receive more commissions from American universities for campus designs and individual buildings; these include the Noyes dormitory at Vassar, as well as an ice rink, Ingalls Rink, and Ezra Stiles & Morse Colleges at Yale University.
He served on the jury for the Sydney Opera House commission and was crucial in the selection of the now internationally known design by Jørn Utzon.
Eero Saarinen and Associates was Saarinen's architectural firm; he was the principal partner from 1950 until his death in 1961. The firm was initially known as "Saarinen, Swansen and Associates", headed by Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swansen from the late 1930s until Eliel's death in 1950. The firm was located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan until 1961 when the practice was moved to Hamden, Connecticut. Under Eero Saarinen, the firm carried out many of its most important works, including the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch) in St. Louis, Missouri, the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport that he worked on with Charles J. Parise, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.. Many of these projects use catenary curves in their structural designs. One of the best-known thin-shell concrete structures in America is the Kresge Auditorium (MIT), which was designed by Saarinen. Another thin-shell structure that he created is the Ingalls Rink (Yale University), which has suspension cables connected to a single concrete backbone and is nicknamed "the whale." Undoubtedly, his most famous work is the TWA Flight Center, which represents the culmination of his previous designs and demonstrates his expressionism and the technical marvel in concrete shells.[1]
Miller House in Columbus, Indiana
Eero worked with his father, mother and sister designing elements of the Cranbrook campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, including the Cranbrook School, Kingswood School, the Cranbrook Art Academy and the Cranbrook Science Institute. Eero's leaded glass designs are a prominent feature of these buildings throughout the campus. http://www.arkitekturanyc.com/cat3.htm
Saarinen died while undergoing an operation for a brain tumor at the age of 51. His wife, Aline, coincidentally, would also die of the same ailment. His partners, Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, completed his ten remaining projects, including the St. Louis Arch. Afterwards, the name of the firm was changed to "Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates", or Roche-Dinkeloo.
Eero Saarinen was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1952. He is also a winner of the AIA Gold Medal.
Saarinen is now considered one of the masters of American 20th century architecture.[1] There has been a veritable surge of interest in Saarinen's work in recent years, including a major exhibition and several books. This is partly due to the Roche and Dinkeloo office having donated their Saarinen archives to Yale University, but also because Saarinen's oeuvre can be said to fit in with present-day concerns about pluralism of styles. He was criticized in his own time—most vociferously by critic Vincent Scully—for having no identifiable style; one explanation for this is that Saarinen adapted his modernist vision to each individual client and project, which were never exactly the same.
- Remodelling of the Swedish Theatre, Helsinki (with Jarl Eklund)
- Concordia Senior College campus, now Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana[1]
- The Law School at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
- The Miller House, Columbus, Indiana.
- Berkshire Music Center, Opera Shed Tanglewood, Massachusetts.
- Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri
- TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport
- Washington Dulles International Airport
- Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel at MIT
- Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in Holmdel, New Jersey
- Case Study House #9, the John Entenza House (collaboration with Charles Eames)
- CBS Building (Black Rock) New York
- Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center, New York
- General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan
- US Embassies in Oslo and London
- North Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana
- Law School and Woodward Court dormitory (demolished 2002) at the University of Chicago
- Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, New York; designed in collaboration with his father Eliel Saarinen
- Ezra Stiles College, Morse College, and Ingalls Rink (affectionately known as "The Whale") at Yale University
- Noyes House dormitory at Vassar College. Its lounge is affectionately called the Jetsons lounge because of its curved architecture.
- Hill College House at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally a women's dormitory, the building was made with a "drawbridge" to symbolically keep men out.
- IBM Pavilion, 1964-1965 New York World's Fair
- IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York
- IBM Rochester, a plant in Rochester, Minnesota
- John Deere World Headquarters, Moline, Illinois
- The "Tulip chair", popularized by its use on the original Star Trek television series (1966–69).
- The "Womb" chair
- North Campus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Earl V. Moore Building, housing the University of Michigan School of Music
- East Terminal at Ellinikon International Airport, Athens Greece, posthum finished.
- Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Medbury, Fitch and Harvey Ingham Halls, Quadrangle Dormitories ("The Quads"), Hubbell Dining Hall, and Oreon E. Scott Chapel at Drake University in Des Moines, IA
- Firestone Baars Chapel at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
- Crow Island School
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1953 Kresge Auditorium, MIT campus, Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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1953 Emma Hartman Noyes house, Vassar College campus, Poughkeepsie, New York |
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- A&E with Richard Guy Wilson, Ph.D.,(2000). America's Castles: Newspaper Moguls, Pittock Mansion, Cranbrook House & Gardens, The American Swedish Institute. A&E Television Network.
- Roman, Antonio (2003). Eero Saarinen. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-56898-340-9.
- Serraino, Pierluigi (2006). Saarinen, 1910-1961: a Structural Expressionist. Köln: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-3645-1.
- Merkel, Jayne (2005). Eero Saarinen. London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 0-7148-4277-X.
- Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa (2006). Eero Saarinen. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11282-3.
- Saarinen, Aline B. (ed) (1968). Eero Saarinen on His Work. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Knight, Richard (2008). Saarinen's Quest, A Memoir. San Francisco: William Stout Publishers. ISBN 978-0-9746214-4-9.
An exhibition of Saarinen's work, Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia, has been organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York in collaboration with Yale School of Architecture and the Museum of Finnish Architecture. The exhibition will tour in Europe and the USA from 2006 to 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by the book Eero Saarinen. Shaping the Future.
In 1973, the Aline and Eero Saarinen papers were donated to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, by Charles Alan, Aline Saarinen's brother and executor of her estate. In 2006, these primary source documents on the couple were digitized in their entirely and posted online on the Archives' website.
National Building Museum
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| Photographers |
- Michelle Andonian
- Curt Clayton
- Don Coles
- Carlos Diaz
- Sean Doerr
- Marge Beaver
- Roy Feldman
- Dale Fisher
- Jeff Garland
- Steve Hall
- Balthazar Korab
- Dave Krieger
- Laszlo Regos
- Tony Soluri
- William Zbaren
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