Saarinen in 1937

If you have not been down to the National Building Museum yet to see Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, don’t wait too long. The exhibit on Saarinen’s illustrious but shortened career (he died when he was 51), is rich and engaging. It took me four visits to go through the entire presentation, which includes sections on his furniture design, corporate and residential architecture and most prominent works: the St. Louis Arch, Dulles airport and the TWA terminal at JFK airport. A movie on Saarinen’s life produced for the exhibit is also available for viewing.

One of my favorite tidbits from the exhibit since I am from New Jersey is about Saarinen’s Womb chair, which he began designing in 1946 and was introduced to the public in 1948. Early models of the chair, which consisted of a single reinforced fiberglass shell covered, upholstered and supported on a bent tubular-steel form, were made in the Garden State by a shipbuilder that worked in fiberglass.