Eero Saarinen’s designs went “beyond the measly ABC” of modernism

We continue our series on mid-century modern design with a profile of Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect and industrial designer whose creations were adopted as the optimistic symbols of a new post-war age.

“We have chairs with four legs, with three and even with two, but no one has made one with just one leg, so that’s what we’ll do,” Eero Saarinen told his friend, designer Florence Knoll, ahead of a new design project.

With that, the iconic, wine glass-like form of the Tulip Chair was born, a design that, along with the soaring concrete wings of the TWA Flight Center, would become synonymous with the design of the so-called “American century.”

Labelled everything from organic and space age to neo-futurist and proto-postmodernist, critics had a hard time assigning Eero Saarinen with a particular style, his work instead defined by its constant revision and experimentation.

Eero Saarinen wanted to break away from the rigorous rules of European modernism, which he termed “the measly ABC” according to curator and historian Donald Albrecht’s book about the designer, Shaping the Future.

He aimed to demonstrate that the well-worn mantra of “form follows function” didn’t mean just building orthogonal boxes – or four-legged chairs.

Eero Saarinen began creating at a young age

Born in 1910 in Kirkkonummi, Finland, to architect Eliel Saarinen and textile artist and sculptor Loja Gesellius, both Eero and his sister Pipsan grew up immersed in the professional world of their parents.

“By the time Eero was five, his talent for drawing had shown itself,” said a 1956 TIME Magazine article. “Sitting under his father’s drafting tables, he busily turned out his own versions of door details and houses.”

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