Airport terminal eero saarinen biography

Summary of Eero Saarinen

One New Year's Day at 8 o'clock in the morning, Eero Saarinen arrived at his office, looked around and, seeing only his assistant Kevin Roche, said, "Where the hell is everybody?" Roche then had to remind Saarinen that it was a major holiday. But most people who worked or lived with Eero Saarinen would probably say that was par for the course, as he was a highly ambitious and extremely motivated architect - we might say today that his work gave him "tunnel vision". Saarinen's passion for architecture and design, recognized from a very early age, led him to develop his personal, often sculptural, direction and an adventurous spirit. In a rather brief career, Saarinen's imaginative daring produced an extraordinary set of highly futuristic buildings of virtually every possible type, whose impressive stature and visionary designs mean that they still seem to be ahead of their time and have largely remained unaltered more than a half-century later.

Accomplishments

• Saarinen's works, like the St. Louis Gateway Arch and TWA Terminal, often are very sculptural - a quality likely derived from both his mother's influence and his own brief training in sculpture - and structurally adventurous, defying our expectations of how they must stand up. They also exploit the possibilities of modern materials - particularly concrete - and engineering know-how to the fullest extent.
• Though ostensibly an architect of the International Style, whose mature period coincides with the heyday of the movement, Saarinen's genius lies in his focus on finding unique solutions for each individual commission. Occasionally, as with his GM Technical Center, he could employ the International Style perfectly, but Saarinen is often called a "second-generation" modernist for the way he moved beyond the rigid glass-box aesthetic pioneered by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.
• Saarinen's buildings, including the Ingalls Ice Rink and CBS Building, tend to resonate w

This article was originally published on June 16, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Built in the early days of airline travel, the TWA Terminal is a concrete symbol of the rapid technological transformations which were fueled by the outset of the Second World War. Eero Saarinen sought to capture the sensation of flight in all aspects of the building, from a fluid and open interior, to the wing-like concrete shell of the roof. At TWA’s behest, Saarinen designed more than a functional terminal; he designed a monument to the airline and to aviation itself.

This AD Classic features a series of exclusive images by Cameron Blaylock, photographed in May 2016. Blaylock used a Contax camera and Zeiss lenses with Rollei black and white film to reflect camera technology of the 1960s.

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Though airplanes had existed since the early 1900’s, it was not until after the Second World War that commercial air travel started to become commonplace. Trans World Airlines was a key player in this development: by allowing customers to purchase flights in discounted packages and offering extended payment plans, the airline took an expensive luxury option and made it accessible to America’s burgeoning middle class. In some cases, their price reductions made travel by airplane cheaper than that by train.[1]

With air travel on the rise, the Port of New York Authority instituted a plan to expand Idlewild Airport (today’s John F. Kennedy Airport) in 1954. The plan, which would allow the airport to handle the massively increased air traffic in and out of New York City, called for each major airline to design, construct, and operate its own independent terminal, a scheme dubbed “Terminal City.” This arrangement was made at the urging of the airlines themselves, who saw it as an opport

Eero Saarinen shared the same date of birth with his famous architect father, Eliel (20 August 1873 and 1910); both the elder and the younger Saarinen were and are very likely to remain the only father-son duo recipients of the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects.

The younger Saarinen was born in Kirkkonummi (Kyrksläte), Finland (then Russia) and grew up in the secluded retreat of “Hvitträsk,” the home/studio where Eliel Saarinen entertained many of Finland’s intellectuals and artists and produced ideas in architecture and planning. Saarinen attended high school at a special progressive school housed within the University of Michigan’s School of Education (then nearby Baldwin High School in Birmingham, Michigan) and apprenticed in the Cranbrook architectural office from 1928 to 1931, taking eight months in Paris, France, beginning in late 1929 to study sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After his return to Cranbrook, Saarinen developed furniture designs from 1930 to 1931 that concurrently embraced a conscious variety of styles, from handicraft to an industrial aesthetic. He entered Yale University in the fall of 1931 and completed Yale’s five-year program in three years.

With the award of a traveling fellowship, Saarinen visited Europe and the Near East and then worked in Finland, where he came in more direct contact with European modernism. Thus began his own synthesis of historic architecture and the progressive trends of technological innovation and its expression. On his return to the United States in 1936, Saarinen entered into a partnership with his father separate from Cranbrook (Eliel Saarinen and Eero Saarinen, 1936–42). Through small commissions, independent competition entries, and collaborations, he achieved national recognition for his American modernism. He briefly worked as a designer for the office of Norman Bel Geddes on the General Motors “Futurama” buil

Finnish-American architect (1910–1961)

Eero Saarinen (, Finnish:[ˈeːroˈsɑːrinen]; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer who created a wide array of innovative designs for buildings and monuments, including the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan; the passenger terminal at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.; the TWA Flight Center (now TWA Hotel) at John F. Kennedy International Airport; the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City; and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. He was the son of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen.

Early life and education

Eero Saarinen was born in Hvitträsk (then in the Russian Empire) on August 20, 1910, to Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and his second wife, Louise, on his father's 37th birthday. They migrated to the United States in 1923, when Eero was thirteen. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father taught and was dean of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and he took courses in sculpture and furniture design there. He had a close relationship with fellow students, designers Charles and Ray Eames, and became good friends with architect Florence Knoll (née Schust).

Saarinen began studies in sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France, in September 1929. He then went on to study at the Yale School of Architecture, completing his studies in 1934. He subsequently toured Europe and North Africa for two years, as well as working for a time in Helsinki in the office of architect Jarl Eklund, where he supervised the remodeling of the Swedish Theatre (1936). That same year, he returned to the United States to work in his father's architectural practice.

Career

After his tour of Europe and North Africa, Saarinen returned to Cranb