About Me
Eero Saarinen (August 20, 1910, in Kirkkonummi, Finland – September 1, 1961, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States) 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.
The son of Eliel Saarinen, the family emigrated to the United States of America when Eero was thirteen years old. He grew up within the community of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, the buildings for 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 son, Eric Saarinen, of his first marriage.
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).
Works
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.
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, and dormitories, an ice rink and an auditorium 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 Saarien, Swansen and Associates which was headed by Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swansen from the late 1930's 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 his most important works, including the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri, the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the Dulles International Airport in 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 Dekeloo 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.
