Eero Saarinen
(1910 - 1961)
Born in Finland in 1910, son of an architect and a gifted sculptor, grew in a household where painting and drawing were taken very seriously. He was taught that each object should be designed in its “next largest context – “a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an enviroment, an environment in a city plan”.
In 1923 the Saarinen family emigrated to the United States and settled in Michigan; between 1930 and 1934 E. Saarinen studied at the Yale School of Architecture and Design and in 1936 he became instructor of design and his father‘s partner in the architectural firm. It was during this period that he began to build a reputation as an architect who refused to be restrained by preconceived ideas.
After working with his father to various projects, Eero Saarinen had a chance to express his own artistic philosophy when in 1947 entered the architectural competition for “Jefferson National Expansion Memorial”. He studied carefully the site and its surrondings to ensure that the design encompassed the whole enviroment. His opinion was that “… all parts of an architectural composition must be parts of the same form-world”. The Arch was to rise majestically from a small forest set on the edge of the river. Saarinen considered it to be perfect in its form and its symbolism. The Arch was Saarinen’s first great triumph, but many others followed. Project such as the General Motors Technical Centre near Detroit, the Twa Terminal in New York City, and the Dulles International Airport near Washington brought him acclaim and established him as one of the most successful and creative architects of his time.
He died in 1961 of a brain tumor and he is buried in Michigan; the following year he was awarded posthumously Gold Metal by the American Institute of the Architects.