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An Architect of the Moment
Eero
Saarinen broke out of the box of architectural orthodoxy to give the
University three of its most distinguished modern buildings.
February
1999
Judith Ann Schiff
Judith
Ann Schiff is Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library.
When
Eero Saarinen first saw the 300-foot central concrete arch of his
design for Ingalls Rink rise above the campus in the fall of 1957,
he said it looked "like the spine of a giant dinosaur."
Saarinen, who had earned his BFA in architecture at Yale in 1934,
would not be the only one to interpret the building in animal terms:
Some called it a turtle, or a fish, but the most lasting sobriquet
would be "the Yale Whale." Metaphors aside, Saarinen's
design for the rink—like his other work, including Morse and
Ezra Stiles Colleges—was driven by an inventive attention to
structure and function, but above all to the spirit of the activities
his buildings were to accommodate.
A standard barrel-vaulted
roof would have been more economical, but much poorer acoustically,
and Saarinen intended that his building be flexible enough to handle
assemblies and dances as well. The use of its "privileged location"
could be justified, he said, only by "beautiful architecture"
that he felt he had achieved in a "structure based on tension
rather than compression, which is unique to 20th-century technology."
After the death of his
father and partner, the noted architect Eliel Saarinen, in 1950,
Saarinen emerged as a leader in experimental architecture. Saarinen's
free use of sculptural forms marked a departure from the boxlike
volumes of the prevailing International Style. In little more than
a decade, Saarinen's thoughtful research, skill in using materials,
and emphasis on process rather than stylized forms produced an impressive
number of unique constructions, including Dulles International Airport
in Washington, D.C., the CBS headquarters in New York, and the TWA
Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport.
In planning
for the new residential colleges, Saarinen faced "a special
challenge."
Part of the challenge, he said, was the "relationship of the
new buildings to their neighbors," the "pseudo-Gothic
gymnasium, with its formidable scale," and the "pseudo-Gothic
Graduate School, with its somewhat smaller scale." The rest
of the challenge lay in the buildings' spirit and meaning. In presenting
the preliminary plans to the Yale Corporation, Saarinen said that
the emphasis of the colleges must be on the individual. Talks with
students strengthened his belief "that the rooms should be
as individual as possible, as random as those in an old inn rather
than as standardized as those in a modern motel." He also hoped
to prevent them "from looking like poor cousins compared to
the existing colleges."
Saarinen achieved his
goals by making the building polygonal "citadels of earthy,
monolithic masonry." He devised a new method of making "masonry
without masons" by pouring crushed stone of varying sizes into
molds, then pumping concrete through hoses inserted into the form
wall between the stones. The citadel colleges were separated by
a narrow walkway, "not unlike a small Italian hilltown street,"
as the architect described it, and crowned by two towers, "since
all other colleges at Yale have some kind of tower or belfry to
identify themselves in the silhouette of the city."
Saarinen died a year
before the colleges opened. In a letter expressing her appreciation
to the Yale Corporation for its memorial tribute, his widow Aline
B. Saarinen described Yale's "particular meaning for Eero."
He felt, she wrote, that "Yale managed, uniquely, to respect
tradition and still to move forward. It seemed timeless and of our
time and of the future. It was this feeling, along with respect
for its intellectual goals and for the life of the individual, which
he wanted to express in his architecture on the campus." 
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