After his father’s death in 1950, Saarinen became principal partner of Saarinen & Associates, and the business thrived – landing him on the cover of Time magazine in 1956. The architect, however, saw his clients as “co-creators” and was dedicated to pushing the established boundaries of modernism, what he called the ”measly ABC.” Clients understood this creative potential. As his career flourished, he was criticized for changing his style depending on his client’s needs and desires. In 1934, Saarinen graduated from the School of Architecture at Yale University. It was at Cranbrook that Eero met Charles Eames, beginning their lifelong collaboration. Settling in Michigan, Eliel co-founded the Cranbrook Academy of Art and designed most of the buildings for the campus – now a National Historic Landmark – while the young Eero worked alongside his father as a student apprentice. Louis, Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport Terminal and the Kresge Auditorium on MIT’s campus express his groundbreaking brand of midcentury modernism.īorn in Finland to famed architect Eliel Saarinen and textile designer Loja Saarinen, Eero immigrated with his family to the United States in 1923. Iconic projects like the Gateway Arch in St. Saarinen’s architectural legacy communicates this sentiment of giddy potential and unfettered optimism in post-war America. Kennedy Airport in New York, which opened in 1962.“The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man’s life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence,” said Eero Saarinen in 1959. One of his largest architectural projects was his design of the TWA terminal at John F. In this context, he designed a number of significant buildings in the USA. In addition to his career as a designer, Saarinen also worked in his father's architectural office until the latter’s death in 1950, after which he ran his own office called 'Eero Saarinen and Associates'. In contrast to the heavily decorated furniture of the early 1950s, Saarinen's designs rely on clean lines and a reduced formal language, which is why they remain timeless designs to this day. 319) by attaching seat shells and tabletops to a single leg. With the so-called 'Pedestal Group', to which the chair belongs, the designer finally succeeded in tidying up the "wretched tangle of legs" in houses and apartments (Fiell 1997, p. The 'Tulip Chair' (1956) also became a classic. Here, the individual elements of the chair are emphasized through a differentiation of material composition, texture and color. The latter represents one of the first postwar designs in seat shell aesthetics. They were created from 1941 onwards.Įxamples include the 'Grasshopper 60' armchair (1946-47) and the 'Womb chair 70' (1948). Today, Saarinen's furniture designs for the Knoll International company are best known. This collaboration eventually led to a series of innovative and award-winning furniture, including the design of the 'Organic Armchair', made of plywood, which won the Museum of Modern Art's 'Organic Design in Home Furnishings' competition in 1940. It was there that he met Charles Eames and, from 1937 onwards, experimented with him on new types of furniture, resulting in the first designs made of molded plywood. After his return, he worked in his father's architectural office and also taught at his professorial chair. Thanks to a scholarship, he was given the opportunity to travel across Europe between 19. The son of Eliel Saarinen, the famous Finnish architect and first president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and the sculptor and textile designer Lola Saarinen, initially studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris (1929-1930) until he finally transferred to Yale University in 1930 to study architecture. Eero Saarinen is - not least as a result of his exchanges with Charles Eames- one of the most influential players in American furniture design from the 1940s to the 1960s.
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