SAARINEN, EERO 1910-1961

ARCHITECT AND FURNITURE DESIGNER

From a Family of Architects

Born in Kirkkunummi, Finland, in 1910, Eero Saarinen was the youngest child of the famous architect Eliel Saarinen, who explained that his son was "born practically on the drafting board." Saarinen's uncle, aunt, and grandfather were also architects. When he was thirteen the family moved to the United States, and his father became director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Saarinen graduated from high school in 1929 and went to Paris to study sculpture. Upon his return to the United States he worked in his father's office on furniture designs. In 1931 he entered the Yale School of Architecture. From 1939 to 1947 he worked for his father's firm of Saarinen, Swanson, and Saarinen, afterward called Saarinen, Saarinen and Associates. His work was interrupted by three years of wartime service in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C.

Functional Furniture

In 1941 Saarinen won two prizes in the New York Museum of Modern Art competition for functional furniture design for pieces on which he and Charles Eames had collaborated. The winning designs were molded living-room chairs and sectional living-room furniture. The 15 November 1948 issue of Life included photographs of a fabric-covered plastic-shell chair designed by Saarinen and manufactured by Knoll Associates and commented that designers such as Saarinen "used industrial materials like foam rubber, steel tubing, plywood and plastic to produce strange and unfamiliar shapes which are nonetheless comfortable and which…could lead to a whole new kind of really cheap, modern furniture."

More Innovation

Saarinen continued to design innovative chairs. After winning the functional furniture design contest he began working on "organic" chair designs, resulting in the "womb" chair, which eased the sitter into a fetal position and was considered by many to be the most comfortable chair ever made. In the late 1950s he designed what was called the pedestal group, in which the body of the chair and its base were a unified structure. Both the womb chair and the pedestal group sold well throughout the 1950s.

Architect

Saarinen was an accomplished architect as well. His achievements include his designs for the Smithsonian Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the master plan for the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. He also designed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kresge Auditorium (1955) and chapel (1955) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York (1960); and the famous Gateway Arch in Saint Louis (1965). He died in 1961 at age fifty-one.