The creator of the ubiquitous Knoll Tulip chairs and tables, Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) was one of the 20th century’s most prominent space shapers, merging dynamic forms with a modernist sensibility across architecture and design.

Among Saarinen’s greatest accomplishments are Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport, the very sculptural and fluid TWA terminal at JFK Airport in New York, and the 630-foot-high Gateway Arch of St. Louis, Missouri, each of them defining structures of postwar America. Catenary curves were present in many of his structural designs. During his long association with Knoll, Saarinen’s other famous furniture pieces included the Grasshopper lounge chair and the Womb settee. Married to Aline Bernstein Saarinen, a well-known critic of art and architecture, Saarinen also collaborated with Charles Eames, with whom he designed his first prize-winning chair.

With rich illustration tracing his life and career, this architecture introduction follows Saarinen from his studies to training to his most prestigious projects, and explores how each of his designs brought a new dimension to the modernist landscape.

The author

Pierluigi Serraino is a practicing architect and design agitator in the San Francisco Bay Area. His projects and writings have been published in journals such as Architectural Record, A+U (Japan), and the Architectural Review (UK). Among his books are Modernism Rediscovered (2000), Eero Saarinen (2005), The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Personality Study (2016) and Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture (2019).

The editor

Peter Gössel runs an agency for museum and exhibition design. He has published Taschen monographs on Julius Shulman, R. M. Schindler, John Lautner, and Richard Neutra, as well as several titles in the Basic Architecture series.

Photo courtesy of Taschen