SAARINEN, Eero

(b. 20 August 1910 in Kirkkonummi, Finland; d. 1 September 1961 in Ann Arbor, Michigan), one of the foremost architects of his generation, who designed some of the most distinctive American buildings of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Saarinen emigrated from Finland to Evanston, Illinois, and then to Detroit in 1923, with his father, Eliel Saarinen, a well-known architect, his mother, Louise ("Loja") Gesellius, an artist, and his two sisters. He was educated in public schools in Michigan, but he and his sisters also helped their father with his designs. The whole family would become involved with designing furniture, fabrics, and wall coverings for their father's buildings. Saarinen began his career by separating himself from his father's influence, studying sculpture in Paris in 1929, before studying architecture at Yale University in 1931, graduating with honors with a B.F.A. in 1934. He received an M.A. from Yale in 1949. Saarinen began his professional career as an architect in Finland, where he designed the Helsinki Post Office (1934). He married Lily Swann and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1939. The couple had two children, but divorced in 1953. On 8 February 1953 Saarinen married Aline B. Louchheim; they had one son.

While in Europe, Saarinen came under the influence of leading modernist architects such as Erich Mendelsohn and Alvar Aalto. By the time he returned to the United States to work with his father in 1936, Saarinen had a well-developed sense of his own approach to architecture. He broke away from modernist influences, including his father's, to create designs that better represented the dynamic culture of the late 1950s and 1960s. Even in the years before World War II, Saarinen developed each building as a unique and self-contained project, designing for the immediate context, rather than architectural progression. This repeated breaking with the past pushed modernist architecture to its natural limits and beyond in buildings such as the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Headquarters in New York (1960–1964), and in Saarinen's masterpiece, the terminal building at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. (1958–1963).

Except for a brief period of wartime service as a government adviser in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., between 1942 and 1945, Saarinen worked in the family firm (which became Eero Saarinen and Associates in 1950) for most of his adult life. He won many prizes in his early career, including the Smithsonian competition in 1939, and, collaborating with his friend Charles Eames, two first prizes in the Organic Design Competition for furniture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City in 1940. Winning the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial competition in 1948, however, established his name, and heralded a new direction for American architecture. His grand arch, built in stainless steel between 1961 and 1966 at Saint Louis, Missouri, is both a monument to Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, and a symbolic gateway to the future. At 630 feet, the arch is the tallest memorial in the United States.

All of Saarinen's important buildings were constructed after World War II, and his greatest work was not completed until after his death in 1961. He created designs for the campuses of Yale University and Harvard University in the 1950s, and the twenty-five buildings of the General Motors Technical Center at Warren, Michigan, all of which are suggestive of his background in sculpture. Other projects he began in the late 1950s include: the U.S. Embassy at Grosvenor Square, London (1955-1960), the Trans World Airlines (TWA) terminal at Kennedy Airport, New York (1956–1962), the Terminal Building at Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. (1958–1963), the John Deere and Company Administration Building at Moline, Illinois (1957–1963), and the CBS Headquarters in New York City (1960–1964). These buildings made regular appearances in the press, in movies, and on television shows, and they came to represent the nation's dynamic, modern attitudes and beliefs. In effect, Saarinen helped design the landscape of 1960s America.

Both Saarinen and his work are enigmatic. He skipped from one architectural influence to another, and few of his designs are of the sort that could be developed by others. Yet his visionary approach was far from haphazard or unplanned. Although the Dulles terminal building is cluttered in comparison with the airy TWA terminal, Saarinen carefully considered the process of moving people through the building and onto the planes, eventually settling on an innovative "mobile lounge" system. The exterior of the Dulles terminal garnered Saarinen the most praise. Its vast suspended roof with its high front and swooping downward curve give the impression of flight, and makes it arguably the most distinctive airport building in the world. Saarinen avoided designing skyscrapers until 1960, possibly because he shared his father's dislike of them, but when he finally did so, it was with characteristic flair. The CBS Headquarters building is considered to be one of the most architecturally distinctive skyscrapers in the United States.

It was not only in the appearance of his designs that Saarinen broke new ground. He pioneered many building techniques that would offer new possibilities for architects in the 1960s and after. Perhaps the most important of these is the "shell" technique, in which the outer shell of a building is constructed independently of its internal structures. Although it became one of the most common building techniques of the 1960s, the first shell construction in the United States was Saarinen's Kresge Auditorium and Chapel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1953–1956).

In 1961 Saarinen was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and he died following brain surgery at Ann Arbor. Often criticized by other architects as a showman, Saarinen is considered by many to have died before completing his best work. His influence on the architecture of the 1960s and after is profound. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960, and posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1962, the profession's highest honor.

Some of Saarinen's personal papers are kept in the Manuscripts and Archives Department at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Books about his life and work are Allan Temko, Eero Saarinen (1962), and Rupert Spade, Eero Saarinen (1971). Further biographical information is in Muriel Emmanuel, Contemporary Architects (1980); Robert C. Judson, Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision (1983); and Dennis Sharp, ed., The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture (1991). An article about Saarinen is in Architecture and Urbanism (Apr. 1984). Obituaries are in the New York Times and (London) Times (both 2 Sept. 1961), Time (8 Sept. 1961), Newsweek (11 Sept. 1961), and Architectural Design (Dec. 1961).

Chris Routledge