Eero Saarinen helped to create the international image of post-war America

A retrospective of the work of this influential and controversial Finnish-born architect is on view for the first time

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By Hannu Pöppönen
     
      An invitation to the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, interviews and long feature articles published in flagship magazines like Time, Life, Vogue, and Playboy...
      On the face of it, it looks as though architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961), who was born in Finland but made his career in the United States*, enjoyed a pretty good life. And yet at the same time as he was the darling of the media and the general public, contemporary critics took a sceptical view of his architectural contributions.
      "Didnt mesh well with the local surroundings and conditions, was eclectic, no identifiable style, illogical...", Donald Albrecht ticks off the list of '60s critical barbs aimed at Saarinen. Albrecht is standing in the Helsinki Kunsthalle, surrounded by the retrospective exhibition of Saarinen's work that opened on October 7th. He is the lead exhibition curator for this project, and also co-editor of the accompanying catalogue.
     
What the critics didn't approve of was that - unlike many other modernists - Saarinen did not create a specific style and make it his own, but adapted his style in accordance with the demands of the client and the respective work in progress.
      His career, stretching over not much more than a decade, includes such fundamentally "different" buildings as the sweeping TWA terminal at JFK International Airport in New York and the United States Embassy building in London.
      The former was a sculptured tour de force from the days before computer-aided design, while the latter was a monumental edifice oozing all the pride and self-importance of imperialism in its pomp. The London Embassy in particular put Saarinen squarely into the critical firing-line.
     
Eero Saarinen died [of a brain tumour] at the age of only 51. Many of his most important designs were thus still only being built at the time of his passing.
      One of these was the 192-metre (630 feet) Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the design for which kick-started his career as an independent architect in 1949. Prior to that he had worked with his father, Eliel Saarinen, the man behind many Helsinki landmark buildings. A famous anecdote concerns the fact that Eero's competition award for the arch was sent in error to his more famous father.
      His early demise meant that Saarinen was not around to celebrate the completion of many of his signature buildings, nor was he in a position to defend himself against his critics.
      Though he is regarded as one of the masters of the second generation of modernists, Saarinen's works were neglected during the 1960s and 1970s to the point where it is extremely hard to find any mention of them in books on architectural history.
     
Now, by contrast, his provocative architecture is once again very much in the limelight: a joint Finnish-American project launched four years ago has reached completion.
      The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., and the Yale School of Architecture have put together the first-ever retrospective exhibition of Eero Saarinen's work, and it is currently on show at the Kunsthalle on Nervanderinkatu in Helsinki.
      The project got started in 2002, when Saarinen's former collaborator Kevin Roche donated the complete archives of Saarinen's work to Yale University.
     
Eero Saarinen's active career coincided with a period in which the United States grew ever more prominently into an economic, political, and technological superpower.
      Saarinen as it were built a national identity for post-war America, just as his father Eliel had done for Finland in the early years of the 20th century.
      "He demonstrated that it was possible through architecture to express national values and ideals, but he also showed that architecture can serve as an image of what the future may hold. For example the main terminal building at Dulles International outside Washington is both a futuristic edifice and a fine Washington monument", says Donald Albrecht.
     
Saarinen's first big success was the Technical Center built for General Motors in Warren, Michigan, using steel, aluminum, glass, and glazed brick. In the American papers it was lauded as "an industrial Versailles", and even among Saarinen's critics it still wins admiring comments.
      "But then after that suddenly he began to turn out buildings in a more historical style. This must have come as something of a shock to the critics, in part because the established wisdom was that modern architecture would be based on the principle of every era having its own chosen idiom", says Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture and Director of the Saarinen research team.
     
The exhibition lays emphasis on Saarinen's architecture for industry and commerce, but it also presents his airports, his national monuments, university campus buildings, and furniture designs like the famous "Tulip Chair" from 1956.
      Saarinen designed buildings for many corporations that had a powerful impact on shaping the modern American way of life. Alongside General Motors were companies like CBS, IBM, and Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey.
      "He did not merely produce corporate architecture, but was also instrumental in shaping corporate culture and style", notes Albrecht.
      For each individual building project, Saarinen would apply the materials and the idiom best suited to depicting the company's field of operations.
     
Eero Saarinen has resurfaced as a topical name with the re-interpretation of 20th century modernism. He created the same kind of flowing free forms that are now popular in the digital age.
      It is not so very hard to see points of comparison between Saarinen's organic forms and the architecture of the in-vogue Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Calatrava's American works include the Milwaukee Art Museum, renowned for its curving wave- or wing-like designs. By a nice irony, the MAM building is a late 20th century addition to a commission by Saarinen himself from 1957.
      Vincent J. Scully was previously known as one of Saarinen's most vociferous critics, but the exhibition catalogue points out that these days Scully, now a professor emeritus at Yale, has come to recognise Saarinen's worth. Just as many others have, on both sides of the Atlantic.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.10.2006
     
Eero Saarinen - Shaping the Future, a retrospective exhibition, will be on show until December 6th at the Kunsthalle (Helsingin Taidehalli), Nervanderinkatu 3. The exhibition is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 11:00-18:00, on Wednesdays from 11.00-20.00, and on Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00-17:00.
     
*Note: Eero Saarinen was born in Kirkkonummi, not far to the west of the Finnish capital, on August 20th, 1910. Many travellers to Finland will have visited the home where Eero was fortunate enough to grow up, the splendid lakeside Hvitträsk Manor (1902-04) in the National Romantic style, designed and owned by the architect trio of Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950), Herman Gesellius, and Armas Lindgren. Eliel moved with his family to the United States in 1923, but they continued to use the house in the summer months until 1949. Hvitträsk, now a museum, is a popular place for tourists to Finland, and even something of a pilgrimage site for architecture fans. It is open throughout the year.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Eero Saarinen - the builder of an American Utopia (12.10.2004)

Links:
  Eero Saarinen (Wikipedia)
  Great Buildings Online - Eero Saarinen
  Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia exhibition and research project
  Museum of Finnish Architecture
  Eero Saarinen´s childhood home of Hvitträsk

HANNU PÖPPÖNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
hannu.popponen@hs.fi