1. EERO SAARINEN
A Presentation
By
RINI T. MATHEW
ABHINAINA BHATIA
B. Arch – 3
K. R. Mangalam S. A. P.
Sub: Theory Of Architecture

2. BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
• Born in Kirkkonummi, Finland
in 1910
• Studied in Paris and at Yale
University, after which he
joined his father's practice.
• Initially pursued sculpture
but then decided to become
an architect. Much of his
work shows a relation to
sculpture.
• He was one of the most EERO SAARINEN
prolific, unorthodox, and
controversial masters of
20th-century architecture.

3. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY & STYLE
• Major influence: Eliel Saarinen, his architect father
• Given his early experiences in Hvitträsk and Cranbrook
communities, Eero learned to appreciate the symbiotic
relationship between individuals and their communities,
and came to believe that the interests of both must be
carefully considered in the design process.
• Saarinen developed a remarkable range which depended
on color, form and materials.
• He showed a marked dependence on innovative
structures and sculptural forms, but not at the cost of
pragmatic considerations.
• He easily moved back and forth between the
International Style and Expressionism, utilizing a
vocabulary of curves and cantilevered forms.
• International Style: A pared down, unornamented style
that emphasized geometric shapes, viewing it as
architecture for the modern age, utilizing new
construction techniques and materials. Flat roofed,
asymmetrical and with bands of windows set into a
rectangular form, International style buildings were a
dramatic departure from past eras.

4. • His design of the USA embassy in London is considered an
example of CLASSICAL ECLECTISM.
• Classical Eclectism: Classical eclecticism rejected high
Victorian picturesque irregularity and seeks to restore
order, unity, and restraint to architecture and
interiors. Its four main styles emulate past examples
and display monumental planning while using
contemporary materials:
a) Beaux Arts: symmetry, five part facade,
rustication, smooth upper stories, advancing and
receding planes, columns, dramatic skylines
b) Neo Renaissance: Large in scale, rectangular block
forms, rusticated lower stories, arched openings,
quoining, flat and/or low pitched roofs
c) Chateauesque: Vertical and picturesque,
asymmetry, smooth stone walls, pointed arch openings,
pinnacles
d) Neoclassical Revival: rusticated basements, flat
roofs, symmetry, Greek order, columns and pilasters,
limited ornament
―the purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance
man’s life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the

5. FURNITURE DESIGN
TULIP ARMLESS CHAIR
WOMB CHAIR
EXECUTIVE SIDE CHAIR
FIBERGLASS CHAIR GRASSHOPPER CHAIR SAARINEN DINING, SIDE AND COFFEE

6. FURNITURE DESIGN
WOMB CHAIR IN FABRIC, CHROME FRAME
Designed for Knoll
The Womb Chair (1946) has an enveloping
form that continues to be one of the most
iconic and recognized representations of
mid-century organic modernism. By applying
foam molded over a fiberglass shell,
Saarinen created a single-piece form that
perfectly facilitates a SIDE CHAIR sitting
EXECUTIVE relaxed WITH METAL LEGS IN FABRIC
posture. Designed for Knoll
The molded shell flexes slightly with the
sitter and the contoured plywood seat
supported by metal or wood legs. Unlike
Saarinen's furniture, which was consistently
sculptural in form, these fluid lines didn't
appear in his architecture until 1950s. When
looking at the dome-shaped glass wall of
The expressive Kresge Auditorium at MIT, it's not a big leap to
sculptural forms of saarinen’s furniture,
which became see the recognizable in the of American
easily same shape icons back of his
modernism, can also be found in his architecture, from the TWA
Executive Chair.

7. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS
• in the postwar decades of what has been called ―the
american century,‖ saarinen helped create the
international image of the United States with his designs
for some of the most potent symbolic expressions of
American identity.
BERKSHIRE MUSIC SHED, GATEWAY ARCH, GENERAL MOTORS TECHNICAL
TANGLEWOOD, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, CENTER,
MASSACHUSETTS, 1940 1961-1966 WARREN, MICHIGAN,
1946 - 1955
TWA, KRESGE CHAPEL, IBM RESEARCH BUILDING,
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, CAMBRIDGE, YORKTOWN, NEW YORK,
1956 -1962 MASSACHUSETTS, 1955 1957 -1961

8. NORTH CHRISTIAN YALE HOCKEY RINK,
CHURCH, NEW HAVEN,
COLUMBUS, INDIANA, CONNECTICUT,
1959 - 1963 1956 - 1958
DULLES AIRPORT,
CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA, 1958
-1962
JOHN DEERE AND KRESGE AUDITORIUM,
COMPANY, CAMBRIDGE,
MOLINE, ILLINOIS, MASSACHUSETTS,

9. NORTH CHRISTIAN CHURCH
• Location: Columbus,
Indiana, U.S.A.
• Project Year: 1959 –
1963
• designer’s Intent: To
design the church to be
a ―prototype for 20th
century christianity‖
• Materials: 3800 yards of
concrete, 320 tons of
reinforced rods & 22
tons of leaded copper
• Floor space: 33,000 NORTH CHRISTIAN CHURCH
square feet
SOURCE: Berkey, Ricky. 2011. http://www.columbus.in.us.html

10. FACADE
• Saarinen wanted to make
the building appear as
one single form with the
church spire an integral
part of the structure
extending down to the
lower corners of the roof
structure differing from
most steeples that simply
appear to sit on the very
top of the building.
• The roof and spire seem to
float over the massive
concrete base. It also
works symbolically to
represent the feeling of
reaching upward to God & FACADE
represents the
development of
Christianity from its
Jewish traditions.
• The sloping slate roof of
SOURCE: Berkey, Ricky. 2011. http://www.columbus.in.us.html

11. • An experience to get
inside like taking a
spiritual journey from SPIRE
the parking area to the
Church
• The hexagonal shape is
thought to be symbolic of
the Star of David, a Jewish SECTION
motif. AUDITORIUM
• Symmetric structure with CLASSROOMS
the sanctuary as focus in SANCTUARY
the center MAIN ENTRANCE
PEW AREAS
• Surrounding it are
classrooms and offices
with an auditorium, ALTAR, CHOIR
AREA &
kitchen and other PLAN
ORGAN
functions below.
SOURCE: Berkey, Ricky. 2011. http://www.columbus.in.us.html

12. COMPARISON WITH A TRADITIONAL CHURCH
SPIRE
SECTION
AUDITORIUM
CLASSROOMS
SANCTUARY
MAIN ENTRANCE
PEW AREAS
ALTAR, CHOIR
AREA &
ORGAN
PLAN OF A TRADITIONAL CHURCH PLAN OF NORTH CRISTIAN CHURCH
SOURCE: Archpriest Sokolof, D. 2011. A Manual of the Orthodox Church’s Divine Services

13. • The organ is presented in
a sculptural form above
the altar area. The
communion table is at the
very center as a focus.
• Natural light from the
oculus shines directly
down onto the area where
the communion tables sit.
• The sanctuary ceiling is
white and soars high
enclosing a very positive,
spiritual space with a INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH
seating capacity of 615.
• The lower level contains
an auditorium/fellowship
hall which seats 350 but
can be reconfigured into
SOURCE: Berkey, Ricky. 2011. http://www.columbus.in.us.html or
two separate spaces

14. DAVID S. INGALLS RINK
• Location: New Haven,
Connecticut,
U.S.A.
• Project Year: 1956 –
1958 YALE HOCKEY RINK
• Materials: concrete &
cables
SOURCE: http://www.yalebulldogs.com/information/facilities/ingalls_rink/index.html

15. • New York Times recently
named it the rink with the
"Best Design" across all
of America.
• Named after former Yale
men's ice hockey captains
David S. Ingalls & David S.
Ingalls Jr.
• The arena gets its
distinctive exterior look
from a humpbacked roof,
supported by a 300-foot
backbone. As a result, it
is also called the Yale
Whale.
• Over the years the rink YALE HOCKEY RINK
has played host to
commencements, concerts
and rallies.
• Logistics of the building
won’t allow for expansion
of the rink’s cozy seating
capacity of 3,500.
SOURCE: http://www.yalebulldogs.com/information/facilities/ingalls_rink/index.html

16. • Cast-concrete
walls run round the
two long edges of
the elliptical plan.
• These walls slant
upwards and
outwards at an
angle of 15
degrees. PLAN
• For the roof, a INTERIOR
central arch spans
the major axis of
the ellipse and
from it, cables
take out two
catenary curves in
both directions. The
concave and the
SOURCE: Sharp, Dennis. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p225

17. COMPARISON WITH A TRADITIONAL HOCKEY RINK
EXTERIOR VIEW EXTERIOR VIEW
PLAN PLAN
MIAMI ARENA, INGALLS RINK
SOURCE: Sharp, Dennis. FLORIDA Architecture: a Visual History. p225
Twentieth Century

18. DULLES AIRPORT
• Location- Virginia
• Date 1958 to 1962
• Building Type- airline terminal
• Construction System-concrete
• Climate-temperate
• Context-suburban
• Style-Modern SKETCH (DULLES AIRPORT) PAGODA LIKE CONTROL TOWE
• Set on a huge (10,000 acre), flat site, this is a highly
distinctive building with colonnades of tipped and
tapered columns on its two long facades.
• a gracefully curving roof hung between them, and a
pagoda-like control tower nearby.
• Mobile lounges are used to carry passengers from the
terminal to their planes. An underground tunnel
consisting of a passenger walkway and moving
sidewalks was opened in 2004 .
• Dulles Airport is an important part of the economy of
the Washington, D.C. area. It employs thousands of
people and generates billions of dollars of business.

19. • When the need for Dulles Airport arose in the mid twentieth
century, the entire functionality of how an airport works
and operates was studied by Eero Saarinen to design an
efficient new airport specifically geared for jet
airplanes.
• Saarinen focused on this aspect of the structure when
planning the flow of passengers from the drop off outside
of the Main Terminal, through the building, and onto the
waiting airplanes.
• A significant feature of saarinen’s design was the mobile
lounge concept. The mobile lounges allowed for the Main
Terminal to be a single independent mass without what
Saarinen called extending structural ―fingers.‖ The mobile
lounges were a modernistic design to bring passengers
directly to the plane and to shorten the walking distance.
• Saarinen also planned for the growth of the Main Terminal
and the airport complex and incorporated future

20. • At Dulles, Saarinen had a unique series of problems:
1. he was designing a complete new airport, providing
a modern gateway to the capital of the nation and
building it for the Federal Government.
2. The site was a flat plain. The main terminus is a
single, compact structure, not entirely free from
formalist tendencies but one which is technically
exciting.
3. The final design concept arrived at was a
suspended structure, 'high at the front, lower in the
middle, slightly higher at the back', generated by a
rectangular plan.
• The form of the building was designed to be centered
between earth and sky, and as Saarinen stated to
―both rise from the plan and hover over it.‖

21. PLAN
•The interior space of the main level is one large, open area
designed to expedite flow of passengers from the roadway
to the waiting planes and to connect the interior of the
terminal to the exterior.
•The ground floor contains baggage circulation, and an
additional basement also serves this function.

22. SECTION
• Eero Saarinen – did not
want to design an ordinary
airport. His main goal
was to find ―the soul of the
Airport.‖
• The Main Terminal alone
cost $108.3 million dollars
to build, and that was in
1962! Because of its unique
design, the Airport uses DULLES AIRPORT CONSTRUCTION
Mobile Lounges (big
vehicles which hold 102

23. The columns punctuate the roof and
curve over the top of the structure The spaces between colum
on the north and south elevations. roof are
filled with glass panels c
into the bldg.
EXTERIOR FACADE
• The Main Terminal is reached by an access road leading
to a three-leveled oval roadway that runs parallel to
the north elevation.
• The 1,240’ long building is composed of concrete columns
40’ apart along the north and south elevations
supporting an upward curving concrete panel roof held

24. • In 1962, Dulles Airport was one of the most modern
airports in the whole world! While only
666,559 travelled through the Airport in 1963, 19.8
million passengers were served by 1999.
• Throughout the 1990s, Dulles Airport went through
a lot of construction. This construction included making
the Main Terminal bigger, building new Concourses and
adding more parking areas for cars.
• Dulles Airport is now undergoing another big
construction program which includes adding two more
runways and building an underground Airport Train
System and stations.
DULLES AIRPORT CONSTRUCTION

25. There have been many significant alterations to the
airport since its construction.
• In 1980 a fifty foot corridor designed by Hellmuth,
Obata & Kassabaum (HOK) was added to the length of
the Main Terminal.
• In 1991 The International Arrivals Building was
completed 300’ west of the Main Terminal designed by
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
• In 1996 the expansion of the Main Terminal from 600’ to
1,240’ was completed and designed by SOM. The expansion
reflected the original design of Saarinen, who planned
for an expansion to accommodate the growth of the
facility. The International Arrivals building was
connected to the Main Terminal due to the expansion on
the west elevation.
• In 2005, the interior of the Main Terminal was renovated
and ticket counters and baggage handling facilities
were updated. An additional baggage basement was

26. • Eero saarinen’s design of Dulles Airport was centred on
how architecture could facilitate the travel
experience of the passenger in the new age of jet
travel. His modernistic creation reflected the
connection of ground to sky, and Saarinen was also
attempting to express ―the movement and excitement of
modern travel by air.‖
• Saarinen was making a statement against static
Federal architecture by incorporating the concept of
movement into his design. Saarinen also extended the
role of the architect by not only creating a functional
and stylistic design for the Main Terminal but by
providing a master plan which would take into
consideration future expansion of the entire complex.
• The architectural design of the Main Terminal subtly
reflects flight and movement. The airport has been

27. JOHN DEERE AND COMPANY
• Location-Moline, Illinois
• Building Type-commercial office block
• Construction System-steel frame, weathering steel and
glass façade
• Climate-temperate
• Context-wooded
• Style-Modern
• This headquarters for a farm equipment manufacturer
pioneered in the use of weathering steel—high-tensile
steel that, if left unpainted, forms its own cinnamon
brown protective coating.
• Set on a wooded site with two man-made lakes, its three
original facilities were an auditorium, an office
building, and display building, the latter two connected
by a bridge across a ravine.

28. • Saarinen's first inspiration was to raise a "rugged"
concrete building: a pyramid inverted, on the highest
bluff overlooking the valley floor.
• The building is not of shiny steel like many office
buildings of the day, but rather, rugged Cor-Ten steel,
made to rust. Cor-Ten dated to 1933 and was developed
for the railroads. John Deere World Headquarters was
the first use of Cor-Ten in such a major architectural
application.
• Saarinen created a working monument that glorifies
•Comprising four farms
with dignity industry, technology and craftsmanship,
totalling 720 acres (290
all in balance with nature. The building is in, of, by and
hectares), the site contained
for the land- the land which is this building's reason to
some existing trees and views of
be.
the valley that promised the
kind of elegance Hewitt(the
client) was looking for.
INITIAL DESIGN CONCEPT (JOHN DEERE COMPANY)
Saarinen's first proposal for John
Deere headquarters was an

29. SITE PLAN(JOHN DEERE)

30. • Saarinen engaged Hideo Sasaki to be the project's
landscape architect.
• The looping driveway lassoed the building complex,
moving from the ravine bottom at the road
intersection, rising along the ravine embankments
and revealing stunning views across the ponds to the
building facades, banking upward into the woodland
landscape, eventually arriving at the principal
parking lots disclosed at the last possible moment,
and then dropping back down again to encircle the
building complex at the rear to provide service
access.
• Saarinen used the cage of Cor-Ten steel not only as
an exterior manifestation of structural members
but to form exterior louvers over the banks of
glass wrapping the building's seven floors.
• To avoid curtains or Venetian blinds, which would

31. Charlotte Bronte John
PLANS

32. SECTION
• At its fourth floor level, glass-enclosed flying bridges
stretch out to the laboratory and the exhibition
buildings on the high slopes of the ravine.
• The complex is approached from the valley below. the
roads have been planned carefully, keeping in mind how
the building would be seen as one drove along the man-
made lake up to the parking lot behind the building and
to the entrance.

33. KRESGE AUDITORIUM
• Location-Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Date-1950 to 1955
• Building Type-school auditorium
• Construction System-thin shell concrete dome, copper roof
• Climate-temperate
• Context-urban park campus
• Style -Structuralist Modern
• this building consists of a spherical segment dome-shaped
concrete roof enclosing a triangular area approximately
160 feet on a side.
• The primary building function is the enclosure of an 1238
seat auditorium and associated lobbies, restrooms, and
projection facilities.
• The dome is entirely supported on three points at the
vertices of the triangle, or was by the original design. As
every article written on the dome seems to mention, the
total weight of the roof is approximately 1500 tons, and

34. TECHNOLOGY
• The building’s roof structure is a spherical
dome. However, because of the interruptions to the
doubly-curved spherical shape due to the triangular
plan of the building, severe edge disturbances to the
membrane stresses in the shell result.
• This requires the addition of a stiffening beam around
the perimeter of the building. The thickening of the
shell to18‖ at the perimeter is intended to provide the
necessary stiffening to the edge of the shell.
• Other technological concerns in the design of the
structure were the transmission of sound from the
exterior into the auditorium, and the application of a
roof membrane to the shell. The selection and
application of a roof membrane to the doubly-curved
shell was a particularly difficult technical problem.
KRESGE AUDITORIM SKETCH

35. CONSTRUCTION ASPECTS
• Placement of concrete on sloped doubly curved surfaces is
difficult at best, and the problems were compounded in the
construction of the Kresge Auditorium by the steepness of
the slopes at the vertices, and by the edge stiffening
beams that were raised above the level of the top of the
roof slab. The selection of the concrete mix for a project
like this presents difficulties of its own. It is necessary to
choose a stiff mix.
• The roof system was a liquid-applied
roof, consisting of fine limestone chips
Picture shows extensive
in an acrylic polymer binder.
preparations for one of the
steepest concrete
placements in the
building. The crew size is
very large for a concrete
placement of this size. LABOR AT WORK(KRESGE AUDITORIUM)

36. PLAN
•This large auditorium seats a maximum of 1226 people,
although only 1144 seats are available when the stage is
extended over the pit seating section. It is used for
concerts, lectures, conferences, plays, and other major
events.

37. • The Kresge Auditorium demonstrates several important
principles in the management of thin-shell concrete
structures. Even from the time of its design, it reveals
the tensions between the architectural and the
engineering profession over the principals to be applied
to design.
• As Billington points out, the conception of the Kresge
Auditorium shell depends on a misunderstanding of the
importance of edge effects, which resulted in severe
structural problems for the Kresge Auditorium shell.
• The problems with this building did not end with the
resolution of the structural problems. The shell was
difficult and unusual to construct, and significant
difficulties were encountered in concrete placement,
protection of the reinforcing steel and above all in
waterproofing the roof of the building.
• The satisfactory resolution of these problems had to

38. CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR WORKS
TIME WORK REMARK
1940 Chair designed Won first prize
together with
Charles Eames for
the "Organic
Design in Home
furnishings―
Competition
1948 Jefferson Won first prize,
National not completed till
Expansion, 1960
Memorial, St. Louis.
1949-1955 General motors First major
technical centre architectural
commission
1953 Kersge Auditorium,
MIT