“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, an environment in a city plan.”Eero Saarinen, Finnish American architect and industrial designer
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About his life
Eero Saarinen, (born Aug. 20, 1910, Kirkkonummi, Fin.—died Sept. 1, 1961, Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S.), Finnish-born American architect who was one of the leaders in a trend toward exploration and experiment in American architectural design during the 1950s.
info source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eero-Saarinen
image source: https://www.knoll.com/designer/Eero-Saarinen
Born to world famous parents, architect and Cranbrook Academy of Art director Eliel Saarinen and textile artist Loja Saarinen, Eero Saarinen was surrounded by design his whole life. A schoolmate and great friend of Florence Schust, it was an obvious choice for her to invite Eero to design for Knoll when she joined the company in the 1940s. His impact on Knoll and the discipline of furniture design would be hard to overstate.
info source: https://www.knoll.com/shop/by-designer/eero-saarinen
image source: https://www.knoll.com/designer/Eero-Saarinen
What are the main features of Saarinen’s style?
He invented new vocabularies for each product, adapting himself to his clients’ demands. Refusing simplistic and abstract architectures, he favoured ostentatious effects. However his furniture featured unpretentious forms blending organic and technological inspirations.
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image source: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eero-Saarinen
Eero Saarinen took full advantage of contemporary advances in industrial manufacturing and materials, which enabled the sculptural, dynamic forms that mark some of the Finnish architect’s most recognizable pieces of furniture (Womb Chair, Tulip Chair) and buildings (TWA Terminal, Gateway Arch). In furniture, bent plywood and heavy plastics provided the figurative clay that he found, on the scale of a building, in poured concrete and steel.
While Saarinen saw architecture and furniture design as posing unique sets of challenges and solutions, he had an all-embracing notion of the totality of design.
info source: https://www.knoll.com/knollnewsdetail/eero-saarinen-architecture-furniture
What are his most famous works?
- “Grasshopper” chair, designed in 1946;
- “Tulip” chair (1958), a flower-shaped fiberglass shell mounted on a cast-aluminum pedestal;
- “Womb” lounge chair and ottoman (1948).
image source: https://www.knoll.com/designer/Eero-Saarinen
In his furniture as in his architecture, the keynotes of Eero Saarinen’s designs are simplicity, strength and grace.