What if the Wright Way, is the Wrong

Way?EERO SAARINEN AS THE GREATEST ARCHITECT OF

ALL TIMEBY HEATHER BOURGEOIS

Why I chose to Study Eero Saarinen

Interior Design: I love design. Bottom line, this is my passion and what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Furniture Design, Architecture & Art

Frank Lloyd Wright and I just weren’t getting along. I found that not only did I not like his work, but I lost some of my respect for him as an architect as I read about him, and my respect and love for Eero Saarinen grew.

I found that this was because not only do I like his designs and relate more to the fluid and curvalinear lines in his furniture and architecture, but I just love rooting for the underdog.

Some people crave food, I crave furniture

My Questions & ProblemsWhy is there a lack of recognition for Eero Saarinen?

Why is Frank Lloyd Wright known as the Greatest Architect of all time and not Eero Saarinen?

What are the requirements for being the greatest American architect of all time?

How can you be the greatest architect of all time if you don’t keep your client’s comfort in mind?

What does this say about the way we live as Americans? Are we more likely to choose style over comfort? Popularity over comfort? Design over comfort?

How important is Comfort in design?

My Thesis Many people in the art world see Frank Lloyd Wright as the

greatest American Architect. What few people understand is how little he took into account the idea of comfort and it’s importance to the client and the piece itself.

I am studying Eero Saarinen and his work in contrast to Frank Lloyd Wright to find out why there is a lack of research and recognition on his architecture and design and help readers understand more about the architect who should be the greatest architect of all time but is relatively unknown and severely underestimated.

This will also help readers to understand the importance of comfort in design and how this relates to American Studies, American Values and American ideals of comfort in Design

MY Point of View Our homes are an essential part of our lives. We spend a large

amount of times in our homes, in our furniture, too much, in fact, not to love where we live and what we live in. Therefore, the architect who we call the ‘greatest architect of all time’ needs to be one who takes this into consideration.

This, I believe should be Eero Saarinen, because unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, Saarinen took into account the comfort of his client when building his homes and furniture and how they would use it and in what room, while Wright was focused more on conceptual details, like traditional art elements and making money. He became so popular and famous that people sacrificed their comfort to have pieces and homes that he made, while Saarinen, who created pieces that met the customers needs flew under the radar, unrecognized as the true great American architect.

So What?This was a question I had a really hard time

answering, but I think I finally connected the So What? back to overall design.

Who decides if you are great or not? Who and what decides whether or not you become the greatest at architecture, art, design?

This is important because it relates to art, design and American Life.

My Methodology/Sources Comparing different pieces to answer my greater questions with

an art perspective, looking at the formal elements of design, like line, shape, color, form and also style elements like comfort, how does it fit in with the rest of the space, client satisfaction and popularity

By studying just a few of the pieces and using Vincent Scully, one of Eero Saarinen’s greatest critics and Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous biographic writer, as well as the work of Frank Lloyd Wright we can see the opposition to Frank Lloyd Wright and my argument that while Wright’s work is respectable and pushed boundaries, Eero Saarinen’s work needs to be reexamined so that he too can have the respect and recognition that his work deserves.

My sources were a mixture of coffee table style art books, scholarly journal articles, art history books and textbooks and biographies. I also had a DVD and primary source photographs.

Comparing Wright vs Saarinen

Saarinen’s Grasshopper Chair

Wright’s Table and Chairs

Saarinen Furniture

The Grasshopper Chair

The Tulip Chair

The Womb Chair

Frank Lloyd Wright Furniture

ArchitectureSaarinen’s TWA Terminal at

JFK Airport and St Louis Arch

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, IL. And Falling Water, Bear Run, PA

Saarinen’s

TWA Terminal

at JFK

Saarinen’s St Louis Arch

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water at Bear Run,

PA

Wright’s Unity Temple, Oak Park, IL

Comparing Wright vs Saarinen: How do you

measure a man? What Makes the Architect Great?

Critic Approval-> Vincent Scully American Society of Interior

Designers (ASID) Popularity, Many fans, people

love you Traditional Art Concepts versus

Modernism Technique over subject/concept Money (earned) Amount of Research Style Comfort

Does order of importance matter?

How this impacts the wider field of American

StudiesAmerican ideas of Comfort

Do we choose design over comfort?

Style over function?

What does this say about art, architecture and design? What does this say about how we choose whether someone is great or not, or who is the greatest?