Strong Finnish

A universally acclaimed architect finally gets his due

October 6, 2006—With JetBlue pledging to preserve his famous JFK terminal and Ikea knocking off his iconic "Tulip" and "Womb" chairs, Eero Saarinen is probably as close to a household name as anyone with an unpronounceable Finnish moniker could ever hope to be. Surprisingly, though, the late architect has never had a major museum retrospective in the 45 years since his death. "Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future," which opens today in Helsinki and will travel to Washington, DC, and New York, aims to make up for the oversight. It includes everything from hand-drawn schematics for famous works like that curvaceous JFK terminal and St. Louis's Gateway Arch to early mock-ups of his furniture to slapdash sketches (including one for a hockey rink at Yale, above) and miniscule models of lesser-known designs for the likes of CBS and M.I.T. So why did it take so long for a cultural institution to give him this recognition? "In his day, he was the most important architect around," explains curator Donald Albrecht. "But a lot of critics thought that he was too commercial and that he stood for everything that was wrong with the 1950s." Wouldn't be the first time the critics were proved wrong.
Through December 6 at the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Kasarmikatu 24, Helsinki, www.mfa.fi/eerosaarineneng, after which it travels to Oslo, Washington, DC, and the Guggenheim in New York.