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'Eero Saarinen' (IPA: eːro saːrinen) (August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish American architect and product 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.

Contents

Biography

Furniture

Architecture

Reputation

A list of works

References

See also

External links

Biography

He was the son of Eliel Saarinen, with whose family he emigrated to the United States of America when he was thirteen years old, in 1923. He grew up within the community of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, the buildings which his father had designed and where his father also taught. Eero studied under his father as well as on courses in sculpture and furniture design. Eero had a close relationship with fellow students Charles and Ray Eames, and became good friends with Florence (Schust) Knoll. He then went on to study architecture at Yale University, completing his studies in 1934. After that he toured Europe and north Africa for a year and spent another year back in Finland, after which he returned to Cranbrook to work for his father as well as teach at Cranbrook. He became a naturalized citizen of the USA in 1940. On his father's death in 1950 Saarinen founded his own architect's office Eero Saarinen and Associates. He had two children from his first marriage; Eric Saarinen and Susan Saarinen. Eric Saarinen is now a commercial/movie director and co-founder of a production company in Santa Monica, California. Susan Saarinen is the founder and lead architect for a landscape design firm in Golden, Colorado.
In 1954, after having divorced his first wife, Saarinen married Aline Bernstein, an art critic at The New York Times, who then worked vociferously on her husband's public relations. They had a son, Eames, named after his collaborator Charles Eames. (Aline Saarinen was later head of the Paris news bureau of NBC-TV.)

Furniture

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. This chair, like all other Saarinen chairs was taken into production by the Knoll furniture company, founded by the Saarinen family friend Florence (Schust) Knoll together with her husband Hans Knoll. Further attention came 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 - at that time more renowned - father.
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 remained in production through 1965, was not a big seller. His Womb chair and ottoman, as well as his "Tulip" collection have remained in production and are considered iconic.

Architecture

The first major work by Saarinen, started together with his father, was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, designed very much in the rationalist Miesian style, in steel and glass, but with the added accent of panels in two shades of blue. 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, Morse College, and Ezra Stiles College at Yale University. Undoubtedly his most famous work, however, is the 'expressionist' concrete shell of the TWA Flight Center, New York.
He served on the jury for the Sydney Opera House commission and was crucial in the selection of the internationally-known design by Jørn Utzon.
'Eero Saarinen and Associates' was the architectural firm of Eero Saarinen, who was the principal partner from 1950 until his death in 1961. The firm was initially Saarinen, Swansen and Associates which was headed by Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swansen from the late 1930s until Eliel's death in 1950, when the name was changed to Eero Saarinen and Associates. 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 in St. Louis, Missouri, the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C..
Saarinen died while undergoing an operation for a brain tumor, at the age of 51. 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.

Reputation

Neglected and sometimes mocked during his lifetime by the architectural establishment, 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 ouvre can be said to fit in with present-day concerns about pluralism of styles. He was criticised in his own time - most vociferously by critic Vincent Scully - for having no identifiable style (Miesian rationalism for the several company headquarters; organic or abstract expressionism for several individual structures such as the TWA Flight Center, as well as his furniture designs; but also classicising eclecticism, for instance in the USA embassy in London): one explanation for this is that Saarinen adapted his modernist vision to each individual client and project, which were never exactly the same.

A list of works

★ Remodelling of the Swedish Theatre, Helsinki (with Jarl Eklund)

★ Concordia Senior College campus, now Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana[1]

★ The Miller House, Columbus, Indiana.

★ Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri

★ TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport

★ Washington Dulles International Airport

★ Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel at MIT

★ Bell Labs 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'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" and "Womb" chairs

★ 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, WI

References

★ Eero Saarinen, , Antonio, Roman, Princeton Architectural Press, 2003,

★ Saarinen, 1910-1961: a Structural Expressionist, , Pierluigi, Serraino, Taschen, 2006,

★ Eero Saarinen, , Jayne, Merkel, Phaidon Press, 2005,

★ Eero Saarinen, , Eeva-Liisa, Pelkonen, Yale University Press, 2006,
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 exhibiton is accompanied by the book ''Eero Saarinen. Shaping the Future''.

See also

★

★ Thin-shell structure

★ Tensile architecture

★ List of notable brain tumor patients

External links

★ Saarinen rising: A much-maligned modernist finally gets his due

★ images of Tulip chair by Saarinen

★ Tulip chair by Saarinen

★ Womb chair by Saarinen

★ Review of new biography in Metropolis magazine

★ Great buildings online entry

★ Earl V. Moore Building

★ Saarinen's Village: The Concordia Campus Through Time

★ Digital image database at the Yale University Library, contains 1273 images and drawings from Saarinen's archives

★
★ Finding aid to the Eero Saarinen Collection at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

★ Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future The 50th Anniversary Exhibition of the Museum of Finnish Architecture

★ Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia

★ Letter from Eero Saarinen to Florence Knoll