What luck! Today is the 135th birthday of the eminent Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen. In Europe, he designed very old-world-looking museums, homes, and railway stations. He also did the town hall of Lahti, Estonia, probably because the Estonians were the only other folks who could understand the language. Sadly, they "preserved" this legacy with an annex (we all know how well those turn out), and then tried to restore the original, "in spirit, though not in style."
OK, so far, nice use of brick work, some clever allusions to history, on the whole, a pleasant use of space.
Then he comes to America, and this, this, and this. Not only is it as though crossing the Atlantic turned him into a completely different designer, but the guy's buildings are on historic registers all over the country.
And you can see why. After all, getting the water to tilt that way at Crankbrook must have taken engineering forward decades all by itself. And capturing the spirit of the moment; that church is Minnesota just doesn't look complete without, say, a windswept Hume Cronyn as pastor, standing in the doorway, peering out severly at the gathering storm.
Needless to say, his more famous son (also born on this day), had somewhat different ideas.
Looking at their architecture, you can see how each was a product of his time and place, but also of the materials available to him. What you can't even imagine with brick, you can effortless create with steel and poured concrete.
Curiously, they also both liked to design chairs, which together with buildings, perhaps indicates a measure of control more appropriate to Germans that to Finns.
