Though short (1910-1961), Eero Saarinen's career trajectory was the stuff of architecture legends. He was destined for the arts from birth -- his mother was an innovative weaver while his father, architect Eliel Saarinen, directed the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. After college he joined his father's firm, but didn't strike out on his own until his father's death in 1950, when he inherited the colossal General Motors Technical Center project in Warren, Mich.
A fierce and tireless competitor, Saarinen proceeded to win several of the following decade's most sought-after commissions: the TWA terminal, the Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., the US embassy in London, and the CBS headquarters in New York, among others. In 1953 The New York Times dubbed him "the most widely known and respected architect of his generation"; three years later he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. By the time his last buildings were completed, Saarinen had won virtually every major architecture award, including, posthumously, the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal, its highest honor.
The key to Saarinen's popularity, according to those who worked with him, was his complete (and, for the profession, unusual) lack of interest in developing a signature style, a trait for which he was derided by the critics. Rather than cultivate an identifiable "look," he built according to the needs of the client and the site, an approach that produced radically different, but equally pleasing, results. At the GM Center, he built a sleek campus inspired by the glass and steel cubes of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; at the TWA terminal, he built a birdlike sculpture out of a complex series of concrete shells, meant to evoke the transition from ground to flight.
To learn more, look at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the St. Louis Gateway Arch and of course, his furniture design for Knoll, including the famous Womb chair.
