Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future | YSOA | Yale School of Architecture

February 18 – May 2, 2010

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future encompasses the architect’s career from the 1930s, when he was a student, through the early 1960s, when the last of his buildings were completed posthumously by colleagues Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo. About two-thirds of the items in the exhibition, devoted primarily to his major building projects, will be installed in the Yale School of Architecture Gallery, while the Yale University Art Gallery will present diverse material related to Saarinen’s early life and domestic projects, along with some fifteen examples of his furniture.

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future has been curated by Donald Albrecht, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York. The exhibition has been organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York; the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki; and the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C., with the support of the Yale School of Architecture. ASSA ABLOY is the global sponsor for the exhibition. Additional support is provided by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, Florence Knoll Bassett, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, Jeffrey Klein, Earle I. Mack, Marvin Suomi, anonymous donors, and the Ministry of Education, Finland. Support for the Yale venues is provided by ASSA ABLOY, Stanley Tigerman `61 M.Arch., and the Joann and Gifford Phillips, Class of 1942, Fund.

The accompanying publication, which has been co-edited by Mr. Albrecht with Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, assistant professor of architecture, Yale School of Architecture, is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and Furthermore: A Program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

The installation in the School of Architecture Gallery opens with a display of drawings, letters, photographs, and other materials dating from Saarinen’s years as an architecture student at Yale—when his designs ranged from a residence for a college dean, to a $1,000-dollar bill, to a synagogue. A highlight here is a watercolor made by Saarinen while on student travels. Titled Acropolis, it was recently donated to the Yale School of Architecture by Richard Nash Gould `68 B.A.,`72 M. Arch.

A section devoted to Saarinen’s large-scale work, titled “Shaping an American Identity,” examines the major public and semi-public buildings that helped to create potent expressions of American aspirations and values at mid-century. Through large-scale models (created by Saarinen’s firm in order to review projects with clients), drawings, photographs, and other materials, the exhibition examines the expressive and technical aspects of an array of iconic buildings. These include Dulles International Airport, near Washington, D.C., and the TWA Terminal, where the architect’s pioneering designs and dynamic forms expressed the glamour of international travel; the soaring St. Louis Gateway Arch, which celebrates America’s westward growth; and the American chancelleries in London and Oslo, which simultaneously make use of modern technologies and adapt to local conditions, conveying an image of the United States as a powerful and good neighbor.

Saarinen’s projects for leading corporations were pioneering designs for the then-new typology of the corporate campus, deploying the power and authority of the traditional country-estate in the service of corporate programs and image. “Creating Corporate Style,” the portion of the exhibition that focuses on this aspect of his work, reveals how, with their advanced building-technologies and materials and their strong forms, these projects created potent images of innovative and forward-thinking companies. For example, General Motors’ promotional brochure for Saarinen’s GM Technical Center, which is on view in the exhibition, was titled Where Today Meets Tomorrow, while Life magazine called the Center “A Versailles of Industry.” The exhibition explores this and other designs, including the corporate headquarters for companies ranging from IBM, to CBS, for which Saarinen created the first reinforced-concrete skyscraper in New York City, and John Deere, where he used Cor-ten steel for the first time in architectural practice.

Saarinen’s work for colleges and universities is explored in a section titled “Forging Community.” Here, buildings for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brandeis University, Vassar College, and Yale, for example, demonstrate his efforts to balance social interaction with privacy, while campus master-plans provided the architect with the opportunity to design a total environment.

“Saarinen and Yale” encompasses drawings and photographs of David S. Ingalls Rink, a structurally innovative, sculptural masterpiece; Samuel Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, inspired in part by medieval Italian hill towns; and planning studies for the Yale campus. A highlight of this section is the first public showing of a video by KDN Films comprising interviews about Morse and Stile Colleges with architectural historian Vincent Scully and architects Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli, both of whom worked with Saarinen. In addition, digital displays feature the renovations of Ingalls Rink, recently completed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, and of Morse and Stiles Colleges, being undertaken by the architecture firm KieranTimberlake.