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...decades after World War II, when America was assuming its new role as the center of the known universe, Eero Saarinen was the man who supplied it with an architecture suited to the place where the future happened. For the marquee names of American capitalism - General Motors, IBM, CBS - he designed buildings that were more than just corporate facilities. They were signposts for modernity, theirs and the nation's. For New York City and Washington, Saarinen provided airport terminals that were symbols of the excitement and glamour of air travel. (It was once possible to think of air travel that...
...rereading of Saarinen gathered speed in 2002, when a trove of his papers and drawings was donated to the Yale University Library by the architect Kevin Roche, who had joined Saarinen's firm as a young man and saw to completion several important Saarinen projects that were unfinished at the time of his death. That archive laid the basis for a museum show that began traveling in 2006 and runs through Jan. 31 at the Museum of the City of New York before moving to Yale, its final stop, on Feb. 19. It tells you something about Saarinen's tricky...
...Saarinen they found a man who operated in their sweet spot. His work had the richness and lyricism that so many Modernist buildings lacked. At the same time, he had taste and intelligence. He wasn't about to give them the kind of thing suited to Vegas casinos and Miami Beach hotels. For the most part, the wow factor in his buildings was a matter of structure, not sparkle. Saarinen was enchanted by the drama of powerful forms. His mother was a sculptor, and he had studied sculpture before switching to architecture. The massive curve of the Gateway Arch...
...emphasized by the Fallopian coils of the stairways inside. And the long enclosed tunnel that passengers had to walk from the main terminal to the gates - isn't that like a birth canal leading you to the moment you are launched into the sky? This is, after all, the man who invented the Womb chair...
Sometimes an inspirational clicks with millions of Mildreds. The word gets out that some little movie will leave audiences limp with emotion and gratitude. A bunch of these true-life uplifters (The Sound of Music, A Man for All Seasons, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Schindler's List, A Beautiful Mind) have won the Oscar for Best Picture, and many others (My Left Foot, Awakenings, Shine, Erin Brockovich, The Pianist, Seabiscuit) have been nominated. It may be that members of the Motion Picture Academy, on the whole far older than the average movie audience, recall when the inspirational was so popular...