Eero Saarinen

For more than half a century people have marveled at the sweeping forms of the Trans World Airlines terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York, lined up to enter the catenary Saint Louis Gateway Arch, and admired the mid-century modern lines of Knoll's "womb" and "tulip" chairs. Yet few can name the designer of these wide-ranging projects: Eero Saarinen (1910-1961).

One of the world's most celebrated architects at the time of his death at the age of 51, the Finnish-born, American-trained master of Modernism designed and built more than thirty-five buildings in his brief lifetime, and more than thirty other projects in collaboration with his father and such celebrated architects as Charles Eames and Ralph Rapson. Saarinen's career began in childhood: As the son of renowned architect Eliel Saarinen, designer of Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Eero grew up in an intellectually charged environment surrounded by art and design. Eero Saarinen trained and practiced with his father until the early 1950s, when he established his own firm and began to design some of the most influential institutions of his day, among them residential colleges and a hockey rink at Yale University, an auditorium and chapel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American embassies in London and Oslo, and corporate headquarters for General Motors, IBM, and Bell Laboratories.

This volume is the most definitive monograph published to date on Eero Saarinen. It traces Saarinen's life and career from his child-hood in Finland to collaboration with his father, through his iconic airport projects of the 1960s, documenting more than sixty commissions and competitions. Extensive illustrations include period photography by Ezra Stoller, Balthazar Korab, and others; rarely seen original sketches, concept drawings, and plans, and more recent color photography.