--- title: The Legacy and Return of Architect Eero Saarinen | TIME description: TIME Art Critic Richard Lacayo reviews a new retrospective of architect Eero Saarinen, whose bold and sumptuous buildings defined post-war American confidence canonical: https://time.com/video/YBH5LGHg/ og:title: The Legacy and Return of Architect Eero Saarinen og:description: TIME Art Critic Richard Lacayo reviews a new retrospective of architect Eero Saarinen, whose bold and sumptuous buildings defined post-war American confidence og:url: https://time.com/video/YBH5LGHg/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/YBH5LGHg/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Legacy and Return of Architect Eero Saarinen twitter:description: TIME Art Critic Richard Lacayo reviews a new retrospective of architect Eero Saarinen, whose bold and sumptuous buildings defined post-war American confidence twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/YBH5LGHg/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The Legacy and Return of Architect Eero Saarinen > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Legacy and Return of Architect Eero Saarinen [Watch (HLS stream): The Legacy and Return of Architect Eero Saarinen](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/YBH5LGHg.m3u8) (4:23)  _Published 2010-02-16. TIME Art Critic Richard Lacayo reviews a new retrospective of architect Eero Saarinen, whose bold and sumptuous buildings defined post-war American confidence_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Long Island Architect Charged in Connection with Gilgo Beach Serial Killings](/video/FhXBYkCt/) ### Long Island Architect Charged in Connection with Gilgo Beach Serial Killings [I.M. Pei, Pioneering Architect Who Designed Iconic Louvre Pyramid, Dies at 102](/video/yWUeS6Ez/) ### I.M. Pei, Pioneering Architect Who Designed Iconic Louvre Pyramid, Dies at 102 [Q&A with Architect David Adjaye](/video/8CBVxL71/) ### Q&A with Architect David Adjaye --- ## Transcript Hi. I'm Richard Lacayo, the art critic of TIME. And I'm here to talk about the Architect Eero Saarinen, who created some of the defining buildings of the post- world war American boom years. He's the subject right now of a traveling museum show and also an extensive effort by Yale University to restore some of the Saarinen buildings on its campus in New Haven, Connecticut. As much as any architect than the decades after World War II, Saarinen outfitted America for its new role, as the most important and powerful and forward- looking nation in the world. In years after the war, when American Corporations decided to embrace modern architecture as a way to symbolize their own commitment to the future, Saarinen designed for the marquee names of American Capitalism; General Motors, IBM, CBS-- he provided the buildings that were sign post for their own modernity. For New York City and Washington DC, he also provided airport terminals that still stand as symbols for a moment, a brief moment when air travel was exciting and glamorous. And as one of his final works, there was his St. Louis Gateway Arch, the gleaming vertical curve that could double as a logo for tomorrow land. Saarinen is just 51 years old when he died after a surgery for brain tumor. He was at the peak of fame and success. He'd been on the cover of time in his streamline furniture designs were so of- the- moment that Coca- Cola used his womb chair in the magazine ad with an exhausted Santa Claus. It was assumed that everybody would recognize the chair and get the Santa in the modern world joke. But while his famous assured, Saarinen's long- term reputation is what you might call unstable. Compared to buildings like Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye or Mies Van De Rohe's Crown Hall in Chicago, the swaying lines of Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK Airport seemed a bit extravagant, too much of a departure from the modernist's box. The fieldstone he used for interior walls of his IBM Research Lab seemed too luscious to be taken seriously. But over the past few years, this has been a reappraisal of Saarinen's work that it tends to understand his departures from modernist orthodox he has virtues. Saarinen who was born in Finland was a modernist almost by birth right. His father, Eliel, was an architect who became famous in the US. The most important project of Eliel Saarinen's American career would be Cranbrook Academy. The school of the arts that emerged over a period of years on the estate of a wealthy patron in Bloomfield Hills Michigan where the Saarinens soon relocated. In his teens, young Eero, who's already working occasionally on projects for Cranbrook. Later he went on to study architecture at Yale and then to established his own practice. From very early in his career, the younger Saarinen's buildings grew out of firm modernist principles. Saarinen had taste and intelligence. For the most part, the wild factor in his buildings when there was one was the matter of structure not glitter. The massive curve of the Gateway Arch, the muscular launch of the tilted pylons of Dallas Airport in Washington DC, the black granite palisades of the CBS Headquarters in New York. And in the Saarinen building, there was always some advance in technology materials. His John Deere headquarters in Moline, Illinois marks the first architectural use of what's called Corten steel with its deliberately rusted surface. It gives industrial strength texture refine line exterior. Yale University has recently been restoring the buildings that Saarinen designed for its campus in the 1950's, worked on the David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink, a voluptuous arena from 1956 has just been completed. With its swelling lines and raised prow, it looked something like a Viking ship, thought it's also known affectionately as the whale. Meanwhile, something closed to a gut renovation of Yale's Morse College in undergraduate residential complex inspired by the plan and proportions, I'm gonna tell you that [ unk ] is nearly complete. Restoration of the adjoining Stiles College begins in the spring. 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