
Saarinen’s first independent work, built in 1956, one that brought immediate renown, was the vast General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. The exciting results were welcomed by many who were bored by the uniformity and austerity of the International Style of modern architecture. In questioning the presuppositions of early modern architecture, he introduced sculptural forms that were rich in architectural character and visual drama unknown in earlier years.
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In the 11 years that he survived his father, Saarinen’s own work included a series of dramatically different designs that displayed a richer and more diverse vocabulary. This partnership was dissolved in 1947 and a new partnership of Saarinen, Saarinen, and Associates was then formed that lasted until the elder Saarinen’s death. In 1945 he joined a partnership with Eliel Saarinen and J. Also, in 1940, Eero became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1940 Eero and his father designed Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois, which influenced postwar school design, being a one-story structure generously extended in plan and suitably scaled for primary-grade children. The marriage ended in divorce in 953 and Saarinen remarried the following year to Aline Bernstein Loucheim, an art critic. Saarinen married Lillian Swann, a sculptor, in 1939, and they had two children, Eric and Susan. Unfortunately, the design was never executed. won first prize in the Smithsonian Institution Gallery of Art competition. He joined his father’s practice in Bloomfield Hills in 1938, and one year later their collaborative design for the mall in Washington, D.C.
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Subsequently, he toured Europe for two years and returned to the United States in 1936 to work in his father’s architectural practice.Įero Saarinen’s professional work in the United States began in 1936 with research on housing and city planning with the Flint Institute of Research and Planning in Flint, Michigan. He stayed an additional year in Helsinki working with the architect Jarl Eklund. At Yale, young Saarinen won a traveling fellowship that made possible a leisurely European visit in 1934–35.
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His father’s architecture in Finland had focused on a free adaptation of medieval Scandinavian forms and in the United States he designed various private school buildings from 1925-1941, including Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He recounted years later, “it never occurred to me to do anything but follow in my father’s footsteps.” Between 19 he studied at the Yale School of Architecture, where the curriculum was untouched by modern theories. Saarinen began studies in sculpture at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, France in September 1929. He took courses in sculpture and furniture design there. He grew up in the town of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where his father taught and was the dean of the Cranbrook Academy of Art. They first settled in Evanston, Illinois, and then in Ann Arbor, Michigan.



The family immigrated to the United States in 1923 when Eero was thirteen. He was one of the leaders in a trend toward exploration and experimentation in American architectural design during the 1950s. Eero Saarinen was born on August 20th, 1910, in Kirkkinummi, Finland to Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and his second wife, Loja Gesellius, a textile designer, and sculptor, on his father’s 37th birthday.
