Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future

I met a couple of friends at Kaldi's Coffeehouse this past Saturday morning before heading over to the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to check out their current exhibit of Eero Saarinen. At Kaldi's I ordered a soy mocha no whip - pretty standard; pretty tasty, and Brian ordered a quiche, hoping it would be a small serving but ending up with a plate full of potatoes, quiche and salad!

After consuming an adequate amount of caffeine, we left the coffee house and made our way over to Wash. U. I had not yet been to "The Milly" (which was designed by Fumihiko Maki, for all you design-heads out there) so the purpose of my trip was twofold.

The building itself was..................nice.
Actually, I quite liked it.

Even against the rain laden sky, the stark exterior felt somehow inviting. I'm a take-it or leave-it kind of modernist but for some reason, with this particular structure, I was on-board. I'm sure many architects and designers would disagree with me, but I kinda liked the innocent nakedness of the museum against the collegiate Gothic structures of the background.

As for the actual exhibit itself which we were there to see, it could have been designed a lot better. Oh well, who cares; the content more than made up for the poorly arranged, arbitrary layout of the space.

Eero was a total stud. Period.



The exhibit, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future had letters written to and from Eero, paintings of Eero as a little boy, sketches on trace, furniture that he had designed and tons of photographs.

I am such a visual person...I look at the captions written about the different pieces, but get bored after reading about 6 words. On the contrary, I could stare at a chair or a floor plan for hours.

Unfortunately the small gallery showcasing Eero's drawings for the St. Louis Arch was closed for maintenance. And still a bigger disappointment was how we were about 2 weeks too late to see "On the Riverfront: St. Louis and the Gateway Arch" at Steinberg Hall (just across from The Milly). I had really wanted to see this show, as my great great uncle, Louis La Beaume, had been a juror for the competition entries of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. He had also submitted a proposal, and I was hoping to see what his thoughts were for the "arch" grounds.

Anywho, Saarinen's work was quite inspirational to me as a student and it felt good to be in the presence of his masterpieces. I sometimes forget how passionate I am about design, and I often wish that I had more opportunities and/or time to really sit down and put the pencil to the trace. My mind is chock-full of ideas that I am keeping locked-up in captivity and I think it's about time to unleash the beast, dang-it!