ArtistFinnish
Eliel Saarinen
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Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen was born on August 20, 1873, in Rantasalmi, Finland. He trained at the Helsinki Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1897, and almost immediately formed the architectural partnership Gesellius, Lindgren & Saarinen with two classmates. The trio's international breakthrough came at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, where their Finnish Pavilion - blending national romantic motifs, Finnish wildlife imagery, and Art Nouveau sensibilities - drew praise as one of the most original buildings at the entire exhibition. The experience established Saarinen as a designer who could operate simultaneously across architecture, interior design, and applied arts.
In Finland his most consequential work was Helsinki Central Railway Station, commissioned in 1904 and completed in 1919. The building marks a pivotal moment in his development: it absorbed the National Romantic influence of his early career and translated it into something sharper, closer to proto-modernism. He also designed furniture for the Finnish State Railways administration buildings during this period, including the 'H-stol' chairs and storage pieces that appear regularly at Nordic auction houses today. His private studio-home Hvittrask (1901-1904, built together with Gesellius and Lindgren in Kirkkonummi) extended this integrated approach - every piece of furniture, every fitting, was designed as part of a total environment.
In 1922 Saarinen entered the international competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower. His second-place design, with its stepped Gothic-inflected setbacks and vertical emphasis, had a greater long-term influence on American skyscraper design than the winning entry. The $20,000 prize money allowed him to relocate his family to the United States in 1923. After a period teaching at the University of Michigan, he settled at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, at the invitation of industrialist and arts patron George Booth. Between 1925 and his death he designed much of the Cranbrook campus, and from 1932 to 1948 he served as president of Cranbrook Academy of Art.
At Cranbrook, Saarinen continued to treat furniture and interiors as inseparable from architecture. His dining room for the Saarinen House, silverware, and textile designs are held in the collections of the Cranbrook Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He collaborated frequently with his son Eero Saarinen, who would go on to reshape postwar American architecture. In 1947 the American Institute of Architects awarded Eliel Saarinen its gold medal, the profession's highest honor in the United States. He died on July 1, 1950, in Bloomfield Hills. His work is held in collections across Finland and the United States, and his furniture designed for Finnish institutions continues to appear at auction in Stockholm and Helsinki.