Eero Saarinen
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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 his simple, sweeping, arching structural curves.
Biography
The son of Eliel Saarinen, he studied with his father at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he had a close relationship with Charles and Ray Eames. He received a B.Arch. from Yale University in 1934, and in 1940, he became a naturalized citizen.Saarinen came to attention for his 1948 competition-winning design for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, not completed until the 1960s. (The competition award was mistakenly sent to his father.) For the General Motors Technical Center, the Noyes dormitory at Vassar, the famous 'expressionist' concrete shell of the TWA Terminal, and other important commissions, he designed all the interiors and furniture in a curving, theatrical, futuristic style. 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.
In 1954 he married Aline Bernstein, an art critic at The New York Times, with whom he had a son, Eames, named for his collaborator Charles Eames.
Saarinen died of a brain tumor at the age of 51. The firm of Roche-Dinkeloo, with partners Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, completed some of Saarinen's unfinished projects. Neglected and sometimes mocked during his lifetime by the architectural establishment, he is now considered one of the masters of American 20th Century architecture.
Works
- Concordia Senior College campus, now Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana [link]
- 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
- Morse College, Ezra Stiles 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 (1960-63), posthum finished.
- Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, Milwaukee WI
See also
External links
- [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]
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