In a period of developing modern architecture in America, Eero Saarinen became the architect’s architect. He went to the USA in 1923 with his father, Eliel Saarinen, whose practice he joined in 1937 after study in Paris and at Yale University. Saarinen’s remarkable range and his instinctive use of colour, form and material are best explained by his early interest in sculpture. Architecture became a sculptural expression; romance was celebrated not balked. After winning the (Jefferson Memorial Gateway Arch) Competition (1948), He began a series of architectural exercises of intensity and expression, adapting ingenuity, sculpture and pragmatism to every project. In 1956 the MIT Auditorium and Chapel indicated Saarinen’s double resolutions: sculptural form and restraint. Eero Saarinen showed how he could handle the international vocabulary with aplomb and then swerve towards an expressionism of breathless curves and cantilever returns mocking much of the mediocre concrete gymnastics of the period. The TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport (1962) will remain one of this century’s iconographic greats, though it is perhaps surpassed in clarity by Dulles Airport. But being one of the famous architects, Eero Saarinen’s rigour, craft and professionalism have seldom been bettered.

Eero Saarinen
b. Kirkkonummi, Finland, 1910;
d. Ann Arbor, Mich. 1961.

List of major buildings / works:
Jefferson Memorial, St Louis, 1948-64.
MIT Auditorium and Chapel, 1956.
Ingalls Hockey Rink, Yale, 1956-9.
TWA Terminal, Kennedy Airport, New York, 1962.
Dulles Airport, Washington DC, 1958- 62.
CBS Building, New York, 1983 (completed posthumously).

Bibliography
Eero Saarinen, Eero Saarinen on his Work, 1947- 64, New York, 1962;
Eero Saarinen “Function, Structure and Beauty”, Architectural Association Journal, July- August 1957;
Eero Saarinen “Six Broad Currents of Modern Architecture”, Architectural Forum, July 1953.
G. Dorfles, “Eero Saarmen”, Zodiac 8, 1961.
A. Temko, Eero Saarinen, New York, 1962.
Eero Saarinen (special issue), A + U, 1984.
E. Hauser, Saarinen, Hamburg, 1984.