American Masters (1985–…): Season 30, Episode 9 - Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future - full transcript

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- Our architecture
is too humble.

It should be prouder,
more aggressive, much richer,

and larger than we see today.

I would like to do my part
in expanding that richness.

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One finds that many different
shapes are equally logical.

Some exciting,
some earthbound, some soaring.

The choices really become
a sculptor's choices.

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- My grandfather
was Eliel Saarinen.

My father was Eero Saarinen

and my name's Eric Saarinen.

And they were architects.

They were both
world-famous architects.

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When he was starting out,

my father worked
under his father.

He worked within the structure
of his father's work.

He would do what
he was asked to do,



and he would be
assigned to do details

and he did them well,

but he was always working
within the confines of the box.

The first chance he had
to make an impact

with a design of his own
and show that he was going to be

more than just the son
of a famous architect

was the design competition

for the St. Louis
Jefferson Memorial in 1948.

- There were quite a few
competitions in those days,

many more than there are today,

but this is the one
that everybody wanted to win.

Eliel's whole career had been
launched with competitions

and he had brought Eero up
to enter competitions.

And, of course,
Eliel also entered.

Both teams were
in the same building,

on other sides of a wall,
working on this competition.

And, after the first stage,
they sent a telegram

to Mr. E. Saarinen.

- I had heard
the story many times.

A telegram came to the door,
said Saarinen won.

So they rejoiced for three days

that Eliel had won.

But it was Eero Saarinen
who won the competition,

not Eliel Saarinen.

So they celebrated again,

and the nice,
sweet way to put it is

to say that Eliel had
good reason to celebrate,

because his son had won.

But, in actual fact, I think
it was a big blow to Eliel.

He had to admit that his son
had beaten him,

beaten him badly,
by a better design.

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- The major concern here
was to create a monument

which would have
lasting significance,

a landmark of our time.

An absolutely simple shape,
such as the Egyptian pyramids

seemed to be the basis
of the great memorials.

The St. Louis Arch could be
a triumphal arch for our ages,

as the triumphal arches
of classical antiquity

were for theirs.

- The St. Louis Arch is one
of those rare moments

where an architectural
competition yielded something

truly daring
and bold and important.

Saarinen's work seemed
very refreshing

to a lot of people.

Very exciting, very engaging,
at a time when

modern architecture
was a pretty rigid thing.

I think Saarinen's Arch
expresses

American optimism
and American openness.

To me, it says, you know,
here's an architect

who sees this country as the
symbol of all that's new,

of every opportunity,
of everything the 20th century

hopes to represent
and accomplish,

and he sums it up in this

breathtakingly beautiful
leap into the sky.

- I was only 19
when my father died.

I never really came to terms

with who he was
or what his work meant.

Now, it's a great joy
to come back and understand

what he did and how he did it.

It's kind of a magical
mystery tour for me.

- The best?

- I think the best is
you can see the reflections.

- Yeah.

- Coming out of school,
I stumbled across filmmaking

and started doing documentaries
and that led to features.

Yeah, there you go.
And drop.

Drop, drop, drop, drop.

- Okay.

- While I've had a long career

and been around the world
many times,

this is probably the most
important thing I've ever done

because I never had closure
with my father

and it's a very
cathartic procedure,

to go back
and film my father's work.

- Beautiful.

- And being able to communicate
his work to other people.

- Welcome to the top.

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- The Arch was a culmination

of a lot of work
my father did with his father,

but it was also the beginning
of his own work.

It gave him strength
to follow his own convictions.

He made it to last
for a thousand years,

and I hope it does.

I do hope it does.

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My grandfather Eliel,
designed and built this house

in the middle of the forest,
in the middle of nowhere.

We're surrounded by woods,

surrounded by nature,
all the way around.

My father was born here
and raised here.

Eero was brought up
in this environment

of artists and musicians
and creative people.

Other artists would come along,

including people like
Maxim Gorky, who was wanted,

being hunted down
by the Russian police.

He was hiding here for a while.

And they sent him out
in a boat for the day

and the police came;
they couldn't find him.

And then Gustav Mahler,
the great musician,

and Sibelius
would play the piano.

They were all friends of Eliel's

and they all had
tremendous influence on Eero.

The room with the fireplace,
you know,

during the winter, it's cold

and we're in Finland, so,

everybody was drawn
to the fireplace

and there was a lot
of discussion there.

- As a child,
I would always draw

and happened to be good at it.

I got more attention from
drawing than anything else.

- One of the draftsmen here
was Otto.

Eero was like four years old
and he'd come up to Otto

and he'd say,
"Could you draw me a horse?"

And so Otto would
draw him a horse.

And, every day, this happened.

Now, many years later,

when my father
was interviewing an architect,

he would ask him to draw a horse

and his reason was
that you can tell,

within two or three strokes,

if the guy knows anything
about drawing, at all.

- My father had his
architectural studio

right in the house.

I practically grew up
under his drafting table.

- He'd be on the floor, drawing,

and Eliel would be
at the table, drawing.

And Eliel would look down,
once in a while,

and I'm sure Eero came up
on his lap

and watched him draw
for a while, and all that, so,

it was just a perfect match.

- Except for a rather
brief excursion into sculpture,

it never occurred to me
to do anything

but follow
in my father's footsteps

and become an architect.

- Eliel's attitude on work
rubbed off on Eero.

Work was everything.

Work was the most
important thing.

When Eero was on the boat,
going to the U.S.,

he was not just a child.

He had a tremendous
intellectual background,

but also, he had
that great training.

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This 300-acre campus
was designed

by my grandfather Eliel.

He brought his family
to America in 1922.

My father was 13.

Eero lived with his parents
here at Cranbrook

until the age of 20.

The first time I came here,
I was about two

and my sister was here

and I looked at her
and she looked like an angel

because she was bathed
in this golden light,

because of the way
Eliel designed this light.

When he was growing up,

my dad was surrounded
by beauty everywhere.

In Cranbrook, he started out
designing details

when he was a kid:
little, Finnish gargoyles.

They're playful and comic.

There's a gate
on that side with a deer.

And there's a gate on this side
with a dragon, it looks like.

We're thinkin' maybe he was
17 years old when he did these.

Kingswood was one
of the last things

that was designed in Cranbrook.

Eero's assignment was
to do the chairs

and he designed pink chairs
because it was a girls' school.

My father designed this,

you know, bow and arrow
that's pointing straight up.

It was the symbol
for the students to aim high.

That's something that Eliel
always talked about

and, at Cranbrook,

my father learned
those kinds of principles.

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- After Cranbrook,
the first thing he did was

go off to Paris
to study sculpture,

as his mother had,
when she was a young woman.

But he only stayed for a year.

Maybe he's already sensed that
he was gonna be an architect.

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- Cranbrook was an amazing place.

You lived there,
you had a studio.

It was a 24-hour-a-day
open classroom.

It really was a hotbed
of creativity.

Very creative people came.

- Frank Lloyd Wright came here.

He bounced me on his knee.

My mother came to study
sculpture at Cranbrook,

and that's where
she met my father.

She had just competed
on the first

U.S. women's Olympic ski team
and she was a lot of fun.

They fell in love,
and they were married in 1939.

They were very influenced
by each other.

She was quite talented
as an artist.

She was working with clay and her forms
from nature influenced my father's work.

- Saarinen's father dies in 1950,

and that's when Saarinen
got to fulfill his ideas.

He was one of those people
who was struggling

to give new form
to architecture,

to break out
of the Modernist box.

He did that, beginning
with great corporate work

like General Motors.

- GM was a car company.

The car companies were

among the most important
companies in the country.

They were outside Detroit.
Detroit was a booming city.

It was the fourth-biggest city
in the United States.

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- The parade of new cars starts

across the stage
among the dancing Motorettes.

It's funny how ancient my own
car seems as I look at it.

- In Detroit, in 1950,

it was really the center
of the design world.

You were starting a car

and it's more than just
that the car can move;

it's how do people
respond to it,

how does it grab your eye
when it's going past.

So, every year,
there was a whole

brand-new set of designs out
and everybody talked about them.

- Ohhh!
This is beautiful!

- A four-door hardtop!
- Ohhhhh!

That's a car
to fall in love with.

- Now, the impact that that
had on architecture was that

you had to be able
to do something

that would interest people.

There had to be new ideas,
new expressions.

- General Motors had come
to the Saarinen office

because of the beauty
of the Cranbrook campus.

They wanted a similar kind
of campus for themselves,

but a corporate campus.

The original design,
under the auspices

of Eliel Saarinen,
is streamlined,

with kind of curving,
aerodynamic shapes,

almost like the wings
of an airplane.

- When Eliel died,

there was a little battle
of who was gonna do the job,

who was gonna do
the tech center.

The risk was
that my father was untested

and really hadn't
proved himself.

- Harley Earl, the head
of design at General Motors,

he had come from Hollywood.

He and Eero Saarinen were alike.

They were very bold.

They were stylists.

He promoted Eero Saarinen
to get the job

and Eero Saarinen
becomes his own architect

with the GM Tech Center.

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- We really had here
an opportunity

to create a total environment

of all the buildings,
all the landscaping.

Here was the Technical Center

for a great metal-
producing corporation.

Somehow, the character of that

should get
into the architecture.

You have to remember
that architecture

is not just here
to give space and shelter,

but architecture
also has the purpose

of marking and enhancing
man's time on earth.

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- There was a need in him

to create a campus better
than Eliel would've created.

He's got the torch now.

- A friend who knew
both Saarinens said,

"Eliel brought Eero up
to believe

one got one's rewards
in maturity."

"Eero waited a long time

and just now
is beginning to get his."

- Aline Louchheim was an art
critic at The New York Times

and she had written an article
about Eliel Saarinen

and she suggested to her editor

that they do a story
on Eero Saarinen.

She took the train to Detroit

to meet and interview
Eero Saarinen

and, of course, it

turned out to be
a very significant meeting.

- I remember the first time
we were alone together,

then sneaking into Cranbrook
and the dark room

and the black coat
at the threshold

and making love
for the first time, hurriedly,

but so that we both knew
this was only the first time.

Then the drive to the airport.

And I looked at you
very intently

and thought how much
I did want to see you again.

- It is difficult
for me to express

how terribly pleased I am

that you seem to like me
more than you anticipated,

because I really seem
to like you.

- I know it seems astonishing
that we should this quickly

have reached
this degree of love.

I remember how sweetly
you said to me, "It's so quick

that it wouldn't make
any sense to anyone else,

but it makes sense to me."

It makes sense to me,
too, darling.

- First, I recognize
that you're very clever,

that you are perceptive,

that you are generous,
that you are beautiful,

that you have
a marvelous sense of humor.

That you have a very,
very beautiful body.

That you are unbelievable
generous to me.

That the more one digs
the foundations

the more and more one finds
the solidest of granite

for you and I to build a life
together upon.

- She was married and,
by then, divorced.

She had two teenage sons.

For whatever reason,

they seemed to have
a very instant chemistry.

They were also very interested
in each other intellectually

and Aline could discuss whatever
he was working on at the office.

- This is the old
Saarinen office,

the birthplace of the major
architecture my father did.

I remember he would turn
all these problems

over and over and over again
and he'd try

a hundred different ways
of solving each problem

before he arrived at a solution.

- What I love about the way
Saarinen worked was

he made big models, huge models,

that he could put his head into
and really look around

at architectural space
and surfaces.

- That's an invention,
in and of itself.

I mean, his model shop was,
to me, I mean, you know,

I ended up becoming an architect
because I saw that office.

There was this rigorous sense

of how you actually
build this stuff.

- Eero started wanting
to put the model together

piece by piece,
in flexible ways,

so he could change shapes
and detail

as the model was being made.

- Lots of computers today
and I think

there's nothing
that compares to this,

simply because it's the closest
you have to space-making.

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- At TWA, we tried
to design a building

in which the architecture itself

would express the drama
and excitement of travel.

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In a way, this is man's desire
to conquer gravity.

- Well, it's hard
to take a bad picture.

I mean, everywhere I look,

it's like beautiful there,
beautiful there.

Everything is so organic.

In the old days,
nobody was making

curved, concrete buildings.

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It was so sophisticated,
they couldn't draw it.

They had to build
the model, first,

and then they had to draw
what the model told them.

- TWA was a particularly long
and difficult process.

I think Eero worked
for about a year

and we sent it to the client,
who liked it and accepted it.

But, after the presentation,

Eero started having
second thoughts.

Eero told the client that,

although they had approved
the design,

that the design was not right;

he had to restart
and redesign it again

and he needed an extra year.

- I went to the model room,

and I saw the balsa-wood models
on the large table

and I looked at it and the
shapes were very free-flowing.

I kind of looked at it
and I said to myself,

"You know,
if I were a veterinarian,

I wouldn't know how
to treat this animal,

because it's not a horse
and it's not a camel.

Do I treat it like a horse?

Do I treat it
like a camel?"

- I would like to get
philosophical about all this

and relate it to love.

Architecture is my great love

and, as such,
I propose to practice it.

- He worked all day
and not all night,

but, basically,
he'd get up at 7:00

and then he'd be back
at 2:00 in the morning.

Susie, my sister, was my Robin.

I was Batman
and she was my Robin.

We were pretty much
together all the time.

I had a beagle dog
and the beagle's name is Suzi.

It was a little confusing, but,

my father explained
to somebody that

it's really not that confusing
because they don't look alike

and also because the dog
made less noise.

It was kind of melancholy
because it was semi-sweet.

It wasn't all sweet and sugary.

Work was the most
important thing for him.

It wasn't money.

And I think, maybe, you know,

there was a little part
of him that wanted...

He wanted to be known
in the future

and to survive the time.

- It was a commitment,
a lifetime commitment, really.

- Yeah.

- He never thought of it
as work or not work.

It was this absolute commitment
to realize it, you know?

I know Eero's Diner, you know,
open 24 hours.

- But those were different
times, you know?

I remember one...

It was either Christmas Day
or New Year's Day

and I was in the office
about 8:00 in the morning

and he came in and he said,
"Where in the hell

is everybody?"

And I said, "It's Christmas Day"

and he said, "Agh!"

- Yeah.

You know, the family
that we didn't have,

you guys were his family.

I remember I was
with my mother one night

and she was in tears
and I was in tears

and we were both
hugging each other.

And I said, "Where's Daddy?
Where's Daddy?"

And she finally called him
and she was in tears,

so he came home

and consoled us for 10 minutes
and then left for work again.

I always resented my father
for literally abandoning

my mother, my sister, and me,

but I never saw it
from his point of view.

My mom was depressed
and she was kind of left alone

because he was obsessed
by his work

and the marriage went south.

Meanwhile, Aline understood
my father's work

and embraced it.

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- If you and Lily were
to separate tomorrow

and, by some miracle,
everything were to go smoothly,

I would still not take it
as an indication

that you would marry me.

I'd be very seriously
heartbroken.

But I don't want you to feel
obligated or trapped.

- You don't realize that
I'm like a turnip or a potato,

one of those plants
that have stored up below ground

a tremendous amount of lust
for a full-blooming life.

In my first marriage,
all those things lay dormant,

hoping that, someday,
a situation would come

where this, my new real life,
would begin.

- Won't it be nice
when all this is settled

and you can get back to being
an architect and to designing

and I can write to you
about ideas,

instead of legal clauses?

- Aline represented the same
kind of ambition he had.

She's very much right there

as his career as a solo
architect takes off.

She positions him
in the very first article

for this whole explosion

and boom in his career
is going to be.

- There was a lot of pain,
early on, and suffering,

but this has changed
my attitude toward my dad.

It's cathartic for me.

Aline used to say any good story

needs the character to change.

Working on this film changes me,

to a degree that
I can forgive him.

- General Motors was quite unique
at the time it was built.

It was amazing.

There was probably
no other project

quite like it in America,
so that, immediately,

very, very important clients
started coming to him.

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- In the 1950s,

there was a positive view
of corporate America

and Saarinen, I think,
taps into that.

He was always trying
new materials,

new technologies,
as a way to build up

the alphabet of a richer,
modern architecture.

- I'd love to work
in a place like this.

It's like the ancient Romans,
you know.

They had these huge columns and
they'd walk around and think,

"I have to think of something"
or "I have to do something"

or "I have to create something."

This is my favorite place,
right here,

'cause this is where
all the boy toys are.

And it's kind of neat
that it's a showroom

when you enter the building
and you see these huge machines

that are maybe taller
than you are.

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- We tried to express
in the architecture

the special character
of the Deere & Company.

We tried to get
into the building

the character
of the Deere products.

We tried to use steel
to express strength.

- The amount of steel
that went into this building

was almost double that
of a normal office building

and, when I talked
to Saarinen about it,

his response was, "Well,
in this building, I use steel

the way I would've used marble
in another building."

- Look at this.
Look at that. Jeez.

- Having selected a site
because of the beauty of nature,

we were especially anxious

to take full advantage
of views from the office.

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- In the 1950s,
there was enormous optimism.

There was a sense
that anything was possible.

Particularly in this country,
there was this optimism

we were rich,
we were leading the world,

we were good at technology,
and all this technology

was gonna lead
in wonderful directions

and Eero Saarinen really
captured that spirit.

He captured it
in the St. Louis Arch;

he captured it his furniture.

♪♪

He had a sense of the
excitement of the future

and the work embodies
that excitement.

We thought we were
going to go to Mars.

If you were gonna go to Mars,

the tulip chair
would be perfect.

- Most furniture designers
are stylists.

They don't approach
things from comfort

and they don't really
think about it

from different-size people.

♪♪

- The furniture is
the architecture in miniature.

The curvaciousness relates

to the sculptural quality
of the architecture

that Saarinen is designing
at the same time.

- It's a bad pun to say
we designed chairs

by the seat of our pants,
but we basically did.

We would make forms
and actually sit in them.

- Eero's thinking about modern
design changed radically

after he met Charles Eames,
who studied at Cranbrook

under Eliel
during the late 1930s.

Their first conversation chair
combined a seat, an armrest,

and a backrest into one form

by bending plywood
in two directions.

The technology had not yet been
invented to achieve this goal.

- In 1940,
the Museum of Modern Art

organized a design competition.

Eero and Charles entered
the competition and they won.

It was a fresh new idea
and absorbed by the world.

- When he first
brought out the side chair,

it was made of Plasticine.

I went to sit in it.

He said, "No,
you can't sit in it.

It's made of clay
and it'll break

and there's only one of them."

So it was hand-sculpted,
hand-done,

by him, in the basement.

- And then, in 1953,
Florence Knoll asked him

if he would do
another furniture collection,

and he smiled because
he's already thinking of one

and it was what we now know as
the Saarinen Pedestal furniture,

which basically allowed
a chair to have one leg.

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- I think the lighting
is amazing.

That there's a shaft of light,
soft light, coming down,

almost in the middle
of the house

and then the shaft of light
right next to the bookcase,

which, soft-toplights the books.

It's brilliant.

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- The Miller House
is a thing unto itself

because Saarinen did
almost no private houses.

He was encouraged to be
as free as he wanted

and, in a lot of ways,
that's what makes

the Miller House really unique,
and yet, also,

at least as rigorous as any
of his other buildings.

- Perhaps the most
important thing

I learned from my father
was that, in any design problem,

one should seek the solution in
terms of the next-largest thing:

a chair in a room,
a room in a house,

a house in an environment.

- Clearly, his creative genius
was his own,

but I do think
Aline really helped him

become better known
to the American public.

End of 1953,
Aline and Eero were married

and I think what's significant
is how much a part

of his office and his career
she became.

She did a lot
of promotion for him.

She knew a lot of people.

She was involved in arranging

for the Time magazine
writer to come

and it landed Eero on the cover
of Time magazine.

It was kind of his arrival
as a cultural figure.

So she's very much part
of the creation

and construction of Eero's fame.

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- Function is only one of
the elements of architecture.

In an auditorium, for example,
function, acoustics,

and sightlines
must be respected,

but the basic form
can come from structure.

- He was inspired by things
that were at hand, you know.

He always had breakfast
and he always had half a grapefruit,

so he came up with the idea

of the Kresge Auditorium
from the grapefruit.

Here's a bowl.

Here'd be half a grapefruit.

And then, you take the slice;
that's the quarter.

And then you take a slice;
that's an eighth.

♪♪

- In designing
the new auditorium for MIT,

the strongest
and most economical way

of covering an area
with concrete is with a dome.

We made dozens of models.

One of them seemed,
at first, strange:

a three-pointed dome.

- And he managed
to make it light,

lightweight enough so that

it's literally perched
on these corners.

Just like the arch, or just
like everything else he does,

it's a magic trick.

- That was very typical of Eero,
to take something which was,

by tradition,
done such and such a way,

and then, you interfered
with the tradition

by sometimes just turning
the whole thing upside down.

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- A year and a half ago,
the only concrete thing

was an ambition to make a mark
in architectural history.

Now, my aim in life has grown
to also be with you.

- About a year or so
after they were married,

Aline and Eero had a son, Eames,

named for Eero's
great friend Charles Eames.

He did some remodeling.

They had desks
that faced each other

and, whereas, in much
of his marriage to Lily,

when the marriage
became unhappy,

he spent long,
long hours at the office,

now, he was more inclined
to come home,

have dinner with Aline,

and then, they would retire
to the workplace.

She also traveled
with him, widely,

to sites where he
was designing something.

She was very,
very much part of his life,

partly because he was
so ambitious and consumed by it,

but I think she also loved it.

- Aline came at the right time,

but my mom came at the right
time, too, for him.

My mom kind of got him out
of the box, I think, originally.

She worked with form.

Form is a very big word
in our family; it always was.

And she'd mold it
however she wanted,

and then she'd fire it and it
would stay and it would last.

And my father kind of did that
at much larger scale.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

- I like the story of the boy
on the Yale hockey team

who said, when he looked up
at the concrete arch,

it made him feel, "Go, go, go!"

I never saw this before.

- Whoo!

- Wildly organic.

♪♪

I've always liked hockey,
but it's kind of cool

that my dad
designed a hockey rink.

It's also, what?

55 years old,
something like that.

- No mercy!

- Doesn't look old.

- Saarinen sent people out
from his office

all over the country,
to look and see

what a great hockey rink
would be like

and they came back and said,
"They're all horrible!

They're all just barns
with ice in the middle,"

so he set out to make something

that would express the
excitement of the hockey game.

- We have the problem of a roof

and a new way
of using old materials.

We're spanning the space
by one single concrete arch,

then hanging cables
from that arch

and, on that, we build the roof.

♪♪

♪♪

- Remember, he wanted
to be a sculptor,

so he had that innately in him.

Where did he get the idea
of extending the structure

and creating the lights
at the end,

to make it look like
a Norse ship?

I don't know.

♪♪

- Saarinen made amazing shapes.

Ingalls Rink was called,
for a while, the Yale Whale,

'cause it almost looked
like a huge, beached whale,

this great, sculptural object.

You hadn't seen something
like that before.

It was an attitude

that you could almost describe
as picturesque,

his willingness to make
architecture entertaining.

He cared about what images
buildings evoked,

what they felt like.

He wanted to create buildings

that you would engage
with emotionally

and that's something
very different

from what was really going on
with Modernism in the '50s.

♪♪

- I am very interested
in campus planning.

Universities are to our time

what the monasteries were
to the Middle Ages.

On existing campuses,
there is the challenge

of building proud buildings
of our time

that are in harmony

with the existing buildings
of other times.

- The Gothic-
and Georgian-style colleges

were built at Yale
when Saarinen was a student.

He knew them intimately,
and he knew

what a Yale residential college
needed to be:

a quadrangle with varieties

of rooftop and skyline
silhouette elements.

Saarinen's colleges at Yale

respect the Yale residential
college tradition.

♪♪

♪♪

- Of our time,
but also timeless.

The architecture should show
that these colleges

were worlds somewhat apart,
worlds with their own flavor,

which emphasis on the individual
and his scholarly life.

- Eero's use of sculpture
at Yale is interesting

because it's not
representational,

and, every once in a while,

you see something implanted,
coming out of the wall.

It's not a gargoyle.

It's become a new, modern shape.

- Morse and Stiles
was a complicated project.

The quirkiness was appealing,
up to a point, but,

a lot of people had issues
with those buildings.

Something in him
made him resistant

to that underlying ideology
that seemed to be

the driving force
in so many modern architects,

the sense that there is
one right path.

Saarinen saw lots of paths.

- He had to be modern
and innovative.

He also had to fit in with
the Gothic imagery of Yale.

It was
an impossible task, really.

But he did get
a lot of criticism

and, of course, when you change

and you do something new,
people resist that.

They have a problem
with that for a while.

- The critics were not
very kind to Saarinen.

- He seemed, as one critic said,
to be kind of an ad man

who gave the client
whatever they wanted

and who did the style
for the job.

- Critics had some problems
with Saarinen all along

because he was seen as not
intellectually rigorous enough.

- I guess he must've
worried about critics,

but he never showed it.

He kept on doing whatever
he felt he had to do.

- I feel strongly that modern
architecture is in danger

of falling into a mold
too quickly; too rigid a mold.

Each building
must have its own look.

I have brought down the wrath

of the modern purists
who favor glass and steel,

even if it clashes with
every building in the area.

♪♪

♪♪

Sometimes the problem
and the times are ripe

for an entirely new, functional
approach to a problem.

No one asked us to grapple

with the problem
of the jet-age terminal

beyond the question
of pure architecture,

but I believe the architect

has to assume
that kind of responsibility.

- The essential element of Eero's
approach to architecture

was the desire to understand

what is the problem
you were trying to solve.

Now, many architects
will brush that off

and have a creative moment
to make a scribble

and say, "Do that."

He wasn't that way at all.

- To every single job
that he did,

there are a lot of problems
and a lot of solutions.

In the case of Dulles,
his first thought wasn't

"What is it gonna look like
or what is it gonna be?"

His first thought was,
"How do we solve

the passengers walking
for miles?"

The jets are getting bigger.

Passengers are going longer and
longer distances to the plane,

so how do you solve that?

- We were flying around a lot

and he had to stop once out
and he would wait to see

how long it took the people
to load the plane,

how long it took the plane
to taxi out to the runway,

how long it took
the plane to take off.

♪♪

- We became convinced
that some new method

of passenger handling
had to be found.

The soundest system
seemed to be one

which brought
the passenger to the plane,

rather than the plane
to the passenger.

We arrived at the concept
of the mobile lounge.

♪♪

The acceptance
of the mobile-lounge concept

allowed us to make the terminal
a single, compact building.

We started with abstract,
ideal shapes.

Gradually, we arrived
at the idea of a curved roof.

It occurred to us that this
could be a suspended roof.

The Ingalls Rink gave us courage
to go to the hanging roof here.

- When he did the Yale hockey
rink, he had a spine,

and then he draped the cables
and put wood on top of that.

Here, he's draping cables

and he's putting
a concrete roof on the cables.

You know, you scratch
your head a little bit.

So, it sticks with ya.

It's like "Oh, yeah, cool idea.

But how does the roof stay up?"

♪♪

- The roof is supported
by a row of columns

40 feet apart on each side
of the concourse;

65 feet high on
the approach side,

40 feet high on the field side.

It is like a huge hammock,

suspended between
concrete trees.

♪♪

- He talked about the fact

that architecture was really
a fight against gravity

and he said that,
if we don't watch out,

if we don't work
very hard at it,

everything we do becomes

too heavy
and too downward-pressing.

Also, the business of soaring,
to Eero,

was a way, sort of,
of making this idea

of the dignity of man
come through,

of making you feel as if you
wanted to take a deep breath,

of standing tall,
or of being a human being.

- I think Saarinen was visionary.

I mean, some of his buildings,
like TWA and the hockey rink

and Dulles Airport,
seem openly futuristic.

And he believed
in experimentation.

He believed in reinventing
things each time around.

- Every new building
or structure that I come upon

is so different from the next
that it's almost like

it's been made
by a different architect.

Because he was trying to get
at what, really,

the structure's for,
and, in this case,

it's religious,
somehow spiritual.

- I think architecture
is much more

than its utilitarian meaning:

to provide shelter
for man's activities on earth.

It is certainly that,

but I believe it has
a much more fundamental role

to play for men,
almost a religious one:

to fulfill his belief in
the nobility of his existence.

- He said he had
three commitments.

One was to his profession,
to do the very best work

- Mm-hmm, sure.
- That he could do.

One was his own,
personal integrity.

And then, he said,
"When I reach the Pearly Gates,

I want to be able
to tell St. Peter

that some of my best work

was that little church
in Columbus, Indiana."

- And, now, to bed and to prayer,

perhaps to dreams,
I hope, of you.

God bless you, darling.

Thank you, God,
for letting me meet Eero.

Help us to reach the rich, true,

and lasting marriage
in which we both believe.

- I was in Cape Cod
and I got a phone call

and Aline just burst into tears

and said, "He's died.

There was a 1 in 10,000 chance.

He had an operation.

They found a tumor in his head.

It was in the creative
center of his brain.

He decided to go ahead
and have an operation

that there was a 1 in 10,000
chance that he would survive,

so, and he didn't make it."

Closure was something
I didn't have with my dad.

But I forgive him for his
genius, you know.

How can you not forgive somebody
for being a genius?

♪♪

- It just happened
virtually overnight.

The day before,
he was working away.

The next day, he died.

It was a tremendous loss.

- But he did an amazing amount
of really good stuff

during that one
productive decade.

Architects' careers usually
mature very late,

have a very, very long arch,

but Saarinen's career
had a very short arc.

Who knows what would've
happened if he had lived longer?

- Even though the tragedy
was enormous,

there was, without hesitation,

the commitment to complete
and to fulfill his legacy.

- Eero and Aline Saarinen were
only married for eight years

and, after Eero died in 1961,

the key aspect of her
contribution to Eero's legacy

was her role in making sure

that his unfinished projects
were finished,

and finished the way
he would've liked them.

TWA was still
under construction;

Dulles Airport
was under construction.

The Arch in St. Louis
was not completed

at the time of his death.

The CBS building had not even
really begun construction

and that was one project
where William Paley

was considering going
with another architect

and she persuaded Paley
that, in fact,

Kevin Roche could
complete the CBS building.

♪♪

♪♪

- If your buildings remain alive,
your memory remains alive.

- He figured out a way
to be important across time,

so even though he died young,
he's still alive.

♪♪

♪♪

- In the case of Dulles Airport,

it's not really that
he didn't get to see it,

because he already saw it
in the model stage

when he was like a giant,
looking down.

- Eero Saarinen loved air travel.

His wife often flew with him.

She also traveled
with him on the road

that led from an idea
in a man's mind

to a building of concrete
and steel and stone

and we're glad she's here
to tell us about that.

- Eero was very anxious
to create, here,

something that would make you
feel, when you came in,

not as somebody said,
that you should have

the Dramamine before you got
out of the cab,

but that you would feel some

of the wonder and the
excitement of, really,

this miraculous thing of getting

from one place to another
through the air.

♪♪

- American actually took over
TWA's routes in 2001,

so the terminal sat dormant
- Wow.

For a number of years.

- But one of the best parts is,

at the end of these
open-house events,

everybody vying to be
the last person,

to take the photograph
with the place empty.

- When I was 14 or 15,

he yanked me out of prep school
and brought me to New York

and he wants me to see this,
for some reason.

I didn't really understand it,
but I saw it bare-bones,

pretty much the time
when everybody

had their fingers crossed
that it would not fall down.

He had told the engineer
that it was finally done

and they were standing
in the middle and he said,

"You know, if this thing falls
down on my head right now,

I will have lived a happy life."

♪♪

♪♪

When I first got the call
that my father had died,

it was from Aline.

Days later, I got instructions
to be at the chapel

at a certain time
for a memorial service.

♪♪

I did my duty:

I came, I listened to the words,

but they didn't mean anything.

I wasn't concentrating
on the details,

the way the light splashed
around the sides.

None of that meant anything.

You know, if you look
at this place,

it's kind of impersonal.

It makes you feel small
and I felt very small.

As the ceremony
was tapering off,

I heard the clicking
of high-heeled shoes.

Someone was leaving,
going out the door behind me,

and I knew it was Aline.

I realized that
she had been in there,

had been really quiet,

never said hello,
never said goodbye.

But now I can say
that I'm finally rewarded

by seeing my father's work,

understanding it, embracing it,

and being able to pass it on.

♪♪

♪♪

- I hope that some
of my buildings

will have lasting truths.

I admit frankly

I would like a place
in architectural history.

Great architecture is both
universal and individual.

The individuality comes through

as a result
of a special quality.

♪♪

Experimentation can present
great dangers,

but there would be
greater danger

if we didn't try
to explore at all.

♪♪

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