From 1896 to 1905 he worked as a partner with Herman Gesellius and Armas Lindgren at the firm Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen. Saarinen was educated in Helsinki at the Helsinki University of Technology. His furniture designs used modern materials to form organic forms with perfect curves and elegant proportions.Armas Lindgren, Eliel Saarinen, Albertina Östman, and Herman Gesellius in the late 1890s Over the next 15 years, he designed many recognizable furniture pieces, including the Tulip chairs and tables. This propelled both young designers to the front of the American modern furniture movement and additionally gave Saarinen his first national exposure as an independent designer. They created a groundbreaking collection of molded plywood chairs, which won first place in all categories – for chair design and for the living room, for which they were awarded contracts for manufacture and distribution with major department stores.
They partnered together in entering a competition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for an upcoming exhibition, Organic Design in Home Furnishings. While at Cranbrook, in 1940, Saarinen met Charles Eames, an American designer, and architect. Even though the design was later rejected, Saarinen was widely featured in the press, which attracted attention to his work. In 1938, they sent in their submission for a design for a museum for the Smithsonian Gallery of Art and won first place. Saarinen began to teach at Cranbrook, work on furniture designs, and compete in architecture contests with his father, which were very popular at the time. His father designed various private school buildings around the country from 1925 to 1941, including the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. and his architecture career began with an apprenticeship and partnership with his father at his architecture firm. Photo courtesy of In 1936 Saarinen returned to the U.S. In 1935, he completed his fellowship and spent a year in Finland working at a Helsinki architectural office. After graduating in 1934, Saarinen was awarded a fellowship that funded his travel to Europe and North Africa. to study architecture at Yale University. In 1929, Saarinen left for Paris, France, to study sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1923 they emigrated to the United States and settled in Michigan. He came from a talented family with famous parents – his father, Eliel Saarinen, an architect, and his mother, Loja Gesellius, a sculptor and textile artist.
Saarinen was born on August 20, 1910, in Finland. Known for his neo-futuristic style, he brought form and function together in unique ways capturing “ an era of technology, of futurism, and of optimism.”
– Eero SaarinenĮero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer, and a pioneer of bringing in elements of exploration and experimentation to American architectural design during the 1950s. The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man’s life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence.