Word: eero
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Outwardly, Eero (pronounced arrow) Saarinen (rhymes with far-'n-then) looks like a country family doctor, dresses with the casualness of a young college prof, prefers to live clear of the cities, in the rolling countryside of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. (pop. 2,100), 18 miles from downtown Detroit. His headquarters is a simply constructed, often cluttered office shed he designed for himself, just two minutes' drive from his home over winding country roads. Even with an office staff of 43, Saarinen's is a small operation by comparison with the major U.S. architectural organizations, e.g., Skidmore, Owings...
...highly competitive profession, where awards mean prestige, Eero Saarinen & Associates is a consistent winner. This spring the firm added another rich harvest of first-place laurels, including 1) the Grand Architectural Award from the Boston Arts Festival, for Saarinen's Massachusetts Institute of Technology cylindrical brick chapel (selected earlier this year by the National Council of Churches as one of the best churches built in the last 25 years); 2) first place in the top-drawer competition for the new U.S. London embassy (TIME, March...
Center of the household for Eero and his older sister, Eva-Lisa, always called Pipsan, was the 90-ft.-long, all-purpose studio and living room where the elder Saarinen worked with his draftsmen while his wife sculptured and sewed. Such a beehive of cultural activity was calculated either to smother or force the children. In the case of Eero and Pipsan, it forced...
...time Eero was five, his talent for drawing had shown itself. Sitting under his father's drafting tables, he busily turned out his own versions of door details and houses. Encouraged by his mother, he progressed to blood-and-thunder pictures of Indians he had read about in James Fenimore Cooper (he can still rattle off the names of 30 tribes) and knights from Ivanhoe. At twelve he was proficiently drawing nudes-a common sight in the house, since Eliel Saarinen was then busy designing Finland's national currency, using nude models (while grandfather Juno Saarinen, a Lutheran...
From his father Eero learned two lessons he never forgot. One: "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context-a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, environment in a city plan." The second, Eero learned one day when he went to visit a girl friend, leaving half-done at home his design for a matchbox-emblem contest. When young Eero asked to stay longer, he was firmly ordered home, told: "Competitions come first, girls second...