Architecture & design
Eero Saarinen
1910–1961 · architect, industrial designer
Finnish-American architect who grew up at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills and ran his office there; his first masterpiece was the GM Technical Center in Warren.
- Born
Kirkkonummi, Finland- Died
Ann Arbor, Michigan
aged 51- Detroit years
- 1925–1961
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Eero Saarinen was a teenager when his family settled at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, where his father Eliel was designing the campus. He took sculpture and furniture classes there and designed furniture for Kingswood School and the family home. After architecture school at Yale and travels in Europe and North Africa, he returned in 1936 to work in his father's Bloomfield Hills office and teach at the academy. At Cranbrook he befriended Charles Eames; together they won the Museum of Modern Art's Organic Design competition in 1940. His breakthrough was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, a crisp steel-and-glass campus dedicated in 1956 and now a National Historic Landmark. It was there he met the critic Aline Louchheim, his second wife, when she came from New York to interview him. The Bloomfield Hills office produced the Gateway Arch, the TWA Flight Center and his Womb and Tulip chairs. He died in Ann Arbor in 1961, aged 51, after surgery for a brain tumor.
Highlights
- Designed the General Motors Technical Center in Warren (dedicated 1956)
- GM Tech Center named a National Historic Landmark in 2014
- Won MoMA's Organic Design competition with Charles Eames (1940)
- Gateway Arch and TWA Flight Center were designed in his Bloomfield Hills office
- Womb Chair (1948) and Tulip Chair (1956) for Knoll
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1949–1956
General Motors Technical Center
His first major work, a modernist research campus for GM; a working corporate site, not generally open to the public.
Lived here · 1930s
Saarinen House (Cranbrook)
The family home designed by Eliel Saarinen, where Eero lived as a young man and contributed furniture; now a house museum toured through Cranbrook Art Museum.
Studied here · 1920s–1940s
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Where he took sculpture and furniture courses as a youth and later taught alongside his father.