Richard Gamble Knight

2010-11-21T22:17:00.000-08:00

In Memoriam

Richard Knight: artist, architect, author, builder, father, friend, grandfather, husband, jeweler, photographer, sculptor. His long and productive life ended quietly at home December 16, 2008.

His far-flung family includes three children, their spouses, and seven grandchildren. Alameda became his adopted hometown when he moved here in 1993 with his wife Judith Lynch. His permanent address is now the Odd Fellows Columbarium, San Francisco.

Knight’s last project was Saarinen’s Quest, published by William Stout Architectural Books. He was both architect and photographer in the office of Eero Saarinen, the modernist who designed the St. Louis Arch, Dulles Airport, and the TWA Terminal among other visionary projects. Knight took thousands of pictures of Saarinen and associates at work. The text that accompanies the images provided new insight into the workings of the office, where they played as avidly as they toiled in the architectural trenches.

The publication of this book, subtitled “The Memoir of a Minion,” was Richard’s peak achievement. At his memorial celebration in Alameda June 2009, friends, family, and colleagues donated more than seventy copies of his book to all manner of architectural and public libraries, from the Architecture School University College Dublin to the Alameda Free Library.

A Misplaced Letter Emerges!

2010-11-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

Susan and Eero Saarinen

A Letter is received at Richard Knight Studios from Susan Saarinen, Eero's daughter! This letter would have made Richard so happy!

From: Susan Saarinen
To: Richard Knight
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 11:17 AM
Subject: Your July 7, 2008 letter

Dear Richard, I came across this letter from you which accompanied your book. It found its way into the wrong spot, so I lost it for two plus years!

I loved the book! Wonderful insights, great photos and a new perspective into the office and working relationships. Many thanks for your kind
thoughtfulness and hearty wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Warmly,

Susan

Susan Saarinen
Saarinen Landscape Architecture
www.saarinen.com

Saarinen's Quest: A Memoir. Richard Knight

2009-12-06T22:12:00.000-08:00

Joining Eero Saarinen’s office as a designer and growing into the role of in-house photographer, Richard Knight captured hundreds of images of the behind-the-scenes process there. This unique personal account of the process, culture, and history of Saarinen’s office is prefaced by a foreword by Cesar Pelli, and a contextual essay by Pierluigi Serraino, highlighting the critical role of large-scale model building practiced in Saarinen’s office.

Category: Featured Publishers, William Stout
Binding: Flexi.
Pages: 168 pp
Publisher: William Stout.
Year: 2007
Publication Place: San Francisco,
ISBN: 9780974621449
Book Id: 76161

Order Saarinen's Quest from William Stout Architectural Books

Order Saarinen's Quest from Amazon

Saarinen’s Quest - Library Donations

2009-12-06T22:03:00.000-08:00

Donations of Saarinen’s Quest as of November 2009
Academy of Art University, San Francisco, California: Mary Novie
Free Library, Alameda California: Cheryl Saxton
Andrews University, Miami, Florida: Mark Vermeulen
Auburn University, Alabama: Chris Buckley
Bartlett University College, London, England: Matthew and Laura Groves
Public Library, Belvedere-Tiberon, California, Marty Gordon
Boston Architectural College: Chris Buckley
Cal-Poly University, Pomona, California: Terry and Jim Eichel
California State University East Bay, Hayward: Kaye and Ray Fitzsimons
California College of Art, San Francisco: Hank Dunlop
Carnegie Mellon University: Paul Frantz
His Royal Highness Charles Prince of Wales, London, England: Gary Kray
Colorado University School of Architecture: Gene Festa
Columbia University, New York: Anonymous
Cooper Union, New York City, New York: Courtney Clarkson and Roy Leggett
Cornell University, New York: John Buenz
Public Library, Dimond Branch, Oakland, California: Claudia Goodman-Hough
Georgia Technical University: Betty de Losada
Public Library, Grosse Point, Michigan: Ken and Marty Frantz
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cesar Pelli
Harvard University Design School, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cesar Pelli
Howard University, Washington D.C.: Jerry and Karen Reynolds
Kent State University Ohio, School of Architecture, Ohio: Nancy Hird
Public Library, Lake Orion, Michigan: Ruth Pudists
Lawrence Technical University, Michigan: Fritz and Mary Jo Grohs
Marin County Library, California: Paul Roberts
Mechanics Library, San Francisco, California: Pam Dernham
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): Colette Collester
Montana State University: Bob Newhall
Occidental College, California: Paul Roberts
Philadelphia University, Pennsylvania: Diane Coler-Dark
Public Library, Pleasanton, California: Connie Anderson
Portland State University, Oregon: Katie Baer
Pratt Institute, New York: Vince Koloski
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey: Bill and Lois Francis
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York: Gary Brown
Rhode Island School of Design: Katch Keating
Main Library, San Francisco, California: Diane and Walter Schultter
Public Library, San Rafael, California: Paul Roberts
Southern California Institute of Architecture: Phil O’Neil
Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona: Lisa and David Baker
Temple University, Pennsylvania: Jane and Greg Goldspring
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana: Paul Duschercher and John Freed
University of California, Santa Barbara, Constance D’Ambrosio
University of California, Berkeley: Don and Lil Cunningham
University of California, Davis: Don and Lil Cunningham
University of California, Berkeley, College of Environmental Design: Don and Lil Cunningham
University of California, Merced: Don and Lil Cunningham
University of California , Los Angeles: Charlotte Irvine
University of Southern California: Betsy Weiss and Tom Miro
University of Colorado, Denver: Jane Woolverton
University of Colorado, School of Architecture: Bob and Barbara Wood
University of Detroit, Mercy, Michigan: John Buenz
University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland: Judith Lynch
University of Illinois, Urbana: Glen Paulson
University of Indiana: Grant Ute and Janice Cantu
University of Miami, Florida: John Buenz
University of Michigan: Mary Jo and Fritz Grohs
University of Oregon, School of Architecture: Hank Dunlop
University of Pennsylvania: Chris Buckley
University of Washington, Seattle: John Buenz
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri: Stuart Farrell
Free Library, Wellesley, Massachusetts: Gunnar Birkerts
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut: Don and Lil Cunningham
Yale University School of Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut: Gene Festa

Design Within Reach talk on Saarinen

2009-12-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

Richard discussing his new book on Saarinen with Pierluigi at Design Within Reach, San Francisco, CA July 2008

Richard's Show at Cranbrook Art Museum

2009-12-06T21:51:00.000-08:00

Explore the Genius of Eero Saarinen with Two Exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum

By admin • Feb 13th, 2008 • Category: Architecture, Lead Story

“Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” and “Richard Knight: Photographing Saarinen” shed light on life and work of groundbreaking architect
About the Exhibitions

Gain an unprecedented perspective on one of America’s most unconventional masters of architecture with the exhibitions “Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” and “Richard Knight: Photographing Saarinen,” at Cranbrook Art Museum now through March 30, 2008.
“Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” is the first retrospective on the Finnish-born architect, whose furniture and buildings, including the St. Louis Gateway Arch and the TWA Terminal at New York’s Kennedy Airport, transformed 20th-century architecture and design.
“Shaping the Future” examines the architect’s wide-ranging career, which was based in Bloomfield Hills, MI, from the 1930s through the early 1960s.
A supplemental exhibition, “Richard Knight: Photographing Saarinen,” debuts on Jan. 26 and offers a rare look into the office and practice of the celebrated firm Eero Saarinen and Associates from 1957 to Saarinen’s death in 1961. The exhibition closes March 22, 2008.
Many of the images from “Photographing Saarinen” are from Knight’s new book, “Saarinen’s Quest: A Memoir,” to be published by William Stout Publishers, San Francisco. The book will be available on January 25 in The Store at Cranbrook Art Museum for purchase.
“Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future” will travel over the next two years nationally to: the National Building Museum (Washington D.C.), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Wallace Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis), The City Museum of New York (New York City) and the Yale University Museum of Art (New Haven, CT). More info at EeroSaarinen.net.

Richard the reprobate

2009-12-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

Richard the reprobate, June 2004

Richard Knight Sculpture - The Movie!

2009-12-06T21:49:00.000-08:00

Nouveau Rococo (Featuring Judith Lynch).

Select Here To Watch The Movie!
Richard and Judith discuss sculpture, movement, politics,
piezoelectric motors, solar energy, and pasta!

Judith and Richard

2009-12-06T21:46:00.000-08:00

Judith and Richard

Article from the Alameda Sun 8/22/2008

2009-12-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

Saarinen's Architecture 'Left a Trail'
Written by Doug Hayward Published: Friday, 22 August 2008

Alameda architect-author Richard Knight (right) with friend and fellow architect-author Pierluigi Serraino, pose in front of wall of push-pinned photos Knight took while working for fabled architect Eero Saarinen. Image Courtesy Richard Knight/Judith Lynch

Opening the pages of Alameda architect-author Richard Knight's new book, Saarinen's Quest, is akin to opening a treasure chest. The jewels with which it brims are never-before-published photos and warm personal memories of fabled Finnish-born U.S. architect Eero Saarinen.

Knight took the rare photos when he was de-facto "house photographer" during the last four years of Saarinen's life before he was died of cancer in 1961. Photos and intimate anecdotes are a fresh perspective not only on the architect-genius, but also on the all-important ethos of his organization, Eero Saarinen & Associates (ESA).

It is this exclusive insider's view that gives Knight's new 167-page work its special appeal in recalling the man whose vision made so many visionary triumphs possible, such as the lofty "St. Louis Arch," the cutting-edge John Foster Dulles Airport and TWA's futuristic terminal at Idlewild Airport.

But for all Alamedans, whether or not they read Saarinen's Quest, the photos in it and many more are now on display at the Alameda Museum Art Gallery at 2324 Alameda Avenue (near Park Street). Culled from thousands of Knight's collected images, many are candid, although most are carefully arranged, innovative "eye-level" views of scale models and works-in-progress. All were originally taken for record-keeping and client presentations.

This same show will also travel to St. Louis, Wisconsin and Yale University as part of a Saarinen exhibit sponsored by the government of Finland.

Next Thursday, Knight and fellow-architect Pierluigi Serraino, also of Alameda, will offer their combined thoughts on Saarinen in an Alameda Museum Lecture Series 2008 presentation entitled, "Musing on Modernism," at 7 p.m. at the museum. (See box.)

Another gem in Knight's book is an illustrated timeline of 15 of Saarinen's more memorable projects. It's a handy reference that is cross-indexed to the text and special sections.

Knight says he carefully designed his book for both novices and advanced devotees of modernist architecture — but without compromising quality. There is a "commonality" for all readers, he feels, based on his personal conviction that "architecture leaves a trail for later generations."

Those rare photos, he says, might never have found their way into public view at all were it not for the "keen eye" of his wife Judith Lynch. Long before they married, she happened one day upon stored boxes from his years at ESA. They were destined, he felt, for an archive, somewhere, eventually. But she recognized them as a new look at "a great man and the remarkable way he worked," and so the book was born.

Richard Knight's first degree was in mechanical engineering, but "it was a wild goose chase and I figured I gotta get a new plan." After earning his architectural degree, he joined Eero Saarinen and Associates in 1957 as a junior designer-architect "in mechanical realms," and his four years there were "like my internship." When Eero died of cancer in 1961, Knight opened his own successful architectural practice, also teaching design architecture, "and loved it."

During that period he worked for Minoru Yamasaki and Associates of Michigan, assisting in the design of the "Twin Towers" lobbies of the New York World Trade Center. After moving to San Francisco in 1981, he maintained his license for some eight years. His favorite architect is Eero Saarinen, "hands down." Knight notes that "Eero also was an outstanding furniture designer, with much of his work still in production." (including the famous "tulip chair.")

Knight also has a high regard for Eero's father, Eliel Saarinen. Beyond them, he is appreciative of Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, known locally for the newly rebuilt San Francisco de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. He is enthusiastic about the new Contemporary Jewish Museum across from Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, calling it "a delightful, cock-eyed thing that pokes its nose out." He relishes the work of Frank O. Gehry and Partners, responsible for the "fanciful" Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the "marvelous" Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Other favorites include Kevin Roche, an Irish-born American architect who joined Saarinen and Associates in 1954 and is known in the Bay Area for the California Museum of Oakland.

Does he like anything other than modernist architecture? Yes. He is ardent about Victorians — and especially the "painted ladies" of San Francisco. "They take 'Victorian' and make it goofy!"

More About Saarinen
"Musing on Modernism," featuring local author Richard Knight with images from his book, Saarinen's Quest, Thursday, Aug. 28, 7 p.m. at the Alameda Museum, 2324 Alameda Ave. (near Park Street). With fellow architect-author Pierluigi Serraino. Also see companion photo exhibit in Museum Art Gallery. Public admission $5. No reserved seats — come early. For information leave message at 748-0796. See www.alamedamuseum.org.

Saarinen's Quest — A Memoir
by Richard Knight, 167 pages
William Stout Publishers, 530 Greenwich St., San Francisco, CA 94133

(Publication made possible by funding from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in Fine Arts, and The LEF Foundation.)

Richard Knight in Paul’s Kitchen

2009-12-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

Richard Knight in Paul’s Kitchen

Richard Knight show Los Gatos

2009-12-06T21:41:00.000-08:00

Richard Knight show Los Gatos

Richard, Phil, Jacqueline, 1988

2009-12-06T21:40:00.000-08:00

Richard, Phil, Jacqueline, 1988

Richard’s younger daughter

2009-12-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

Richard’s younger daughter Christy with Grover.

Subtle-Supple-Solar-Sylphs

2009-12-06T21:37:00.000-08:00

A soaring suspended sculpture, fabricated from shaped anodized aluminum

A Round of Drinks for the Good Richard Knight

2009-12-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

by Mike Mosher

I have been thinking a lot about the artist Richard Knight since his death in December, a few days after his eighty-second birthday. He left us elegant and witty artwork, and examples of a good life and even a good death. And, like many, his was one more story of San Francisco as an arena for personal reinvention.

When Richard Knight appeared in San Francisco about 1981, he was suddenly one of the coolest guys around. Art curator Bob Hanamura, whose presence at any art event indicated it was the hip place to be, introduced Richard as one more recent exile from Michigan. At about age fifty, Richard had left a soured marriage and career as an architect for adventure on the west coast, and found himself in my own crowd of twenty-something SF State grad students of Painting, miscellaneous artists, songwriters and Punk rockers.

He first lived on Potrero Hill until he found a former bar on Third street, then an industrial area called "Dogpatch", before rickety lawyer lofts went up in the 1990s. He filled the space with artwork, his own sculptures completed or in progress, plus fine photographs and old billboard graphics on the walls. Massive ladder-back chairs made out of steel and lumber surrounded his busy dining table. Ever one for the dada pun, he created a "newspaper column" by positioning stacked newspapers around the support pillar the middle of his space. His work of the last decade was characterized by aluminum ribbons, bent elegantly, movement frozen in metal. A metal flag with skeptical text commemorated 9/11, one of his most overtly political works but also, paradoxically, one of his loveliest.

He refashioned an old Corvair that he inherited from his mother into his "official test car", painting it in portentious gray-green primer, stencilling on some cryptic numbers, and mounting a large, rotating wind-measuring anenometer (actually, no more functional than the propeller on a beanie hat) in the center of the roof. Richard and I even collaborated on a project about twenty years ago, an "urban scarecrow" for a competition at a San Francisco County Fair. With plywood, a beam and a 55-gallon drum fished out of the dump behind his studio, plus several dozen parking tickets supplied by SoMa restauranteur Mark Rennie, we assembled a scowling moustachioed cop, the tickets stapled to his body like feathery plumage. It was called Ticketron!

Richard drew upon his architectural background for some projects, and briefly taught interior design at the Academy of Art College. A small shrine for Buddhist mediation that he built of Fom-Cor had tiny figures at the bottom, that turned it into a maquette for a multi-story tower. He consulted on the ILWU mural-sculpture in its early stages, but was dissatisfied with the ultimate results. He once proposed a mammoth Gateway to the Mission, to be erected where Van Ness and Mission Streets intersect, upon which I was to paint murals of appropriate neighborhood imagery. His plan for the butt-end of the Embarcadero Freeway a waterfall that could serve as a free shower for the homeless population, and his insouciant little ink drawing of the idea appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

While there were raucous parties in my Clarion Alley studio, our art gang also convened in various Mission and Bernal Heights neighborhood bars. I can’t remember the name of the favorite place on Army (now Cesar Chavez), but other evenings of big ideas, local gossip, wit and sparkling talk took place at the Rite Spot on Folsom, the Circle Club on Valencia, the Nock Nock on Haight, and a friendly women’s bar on Richland that one Marie Laurencin-like painter suggested. In those days, I occasionally tended bar at Patrick Nolan’s Dovre Club, a mordant and macho place occupying the corner of the mural-bedecked Women’s Building, so several gatherings took place there.

Richard was a prankster. One night when drinking at the Dolphin P. Rempp Ship Restaurant near China Basin, there were limousine races going on, teams of collegiates stopping at various points, having a drink, taking their receipt and moving on. Richard and another reprobate piled into one of the waiting limos, and when the driver turned around and said "Hey, you’re not the guys I dropped off", Richard replied sotto voce, "Oh wait, maybe you’re the wrong limo".

In the late 1980s he took up with laughing Judith Lynch, whom he later married, his companion to the end. He was especially excited by a video she had made of the electrocution of a pickle, indicative of the goofy sense of humor that helped win his heart. They moved to Alameda, and he continued making his sculpture, exhibiting on the peninsula and elsewhere.

He also plugged back into his Michigan life, when Judith encouraged him to assemble his archive of fifty-year-old photographs from an early job in the studio of the architect Eero Saarinen into a book, which was published by William Stout Publishers. My university’s gallery held a show of his sculptures in Fall, 2007, and while in the midwest, he introduced himself to Cranbrook Art Center just north of Detroit. As they had scheduled a Saarinen exhibit, Cranbrook promptly invited him to exhibit his photographs, and to speak at a seminar discussing Saarinen and his work. As he rose to speak at the seminar, friends noticed Richard wore a pair of brightly-colored, and mismatched, socks. A glimpse into the front row of the audience showed that Judith was wearing the same color scheme, their mates.

After that year of professional success, some cancer that had been brewing (about which he had been cagey and didn’t want to talk about) started to get the best of him. After Judith said something in an email about hospice care, I gave him a call, and managed to catch him on his birthday. His family was gathered around, and I could hear his smile through the phone line as he said weakly "Hey, life is good."

Yet we ended up disagreeing on a theological point. One night, shortly after Pat Nolan died in the 1990s, I dreamt of Heaven as a resplendent barroom, where effusive publican Nolan presided and served everyone throughout history you’d ever want to meet. That’s remained my consoling vision of the afterlife, so as what I knew would be my last conversation with Richard was wrapping up, I said "Richard, we’ll all meet again at the Dovre Club". He paused, perhaps remembering the early 1980s more clearly than I, and muttered "Yeah, well, I don’t know about that dive...".

—February 23, 2009

Community muralist Mike Mosher lived in San Francisco and the Bay Area 1978-2000. He now teaches art and digital media at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan.

Safe Jounalism

2009-12-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

A giant latex condom sheaths journalistic endeavors.

Official Test Car

2009-12-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

Official Test Car: a “ladlelator” fabricated from soup ladles, oversized faux batteries, a sound system that produces labored breathing or a heartbeat, distressed coachwork, and institutional decor transforms a 1965 Corvair into the Official Test Car.

Saturnalia

2009-12-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

Mixed Media, Series of 120 prints

Dangling Participles

2009-12-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

8' high x 5' wide x 2' deep, a hanging mixed media sculpture of ten strips of painted steel, each inscribed with a dangling participle.

Floribundus-Spiriferous

2009-12-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

A soaring suspended sculpture, fabricated from shaped anodized aluminum

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall . . . .,

2009-12-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Chrome, 48" high x 48" wide x 5" deep, wall-mounted

Solar Perplex-Us

2009-12-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

Anodized aluminim with solar cell powered motor

Vincent

2009-12-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

One in a series of paper-framed images.

Al Dente

2009-12-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

36" high x 36" wide x 8" deep, a wall-mounted sculpture of painted strips of shaped aluminum suggesting a platter of pasta.

Sixteen Knots

2009-12-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

Painted shaped steel streaming from a steel shaft imbedded in a concrete base; one of a series of shaped metal sculptures.

8' high x 3' wide x 4' deep

Edward's Seat

2009-12-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

Named for Edward VII (1841-1909), trencherman and philanderer. An incontinent pigeon perches on its pediment. The back sports a screen-printed image of Edward and a stern caution against artist voiced by his mother, Queen Victoria (1819—1901).

78" high x 32" wide x 24" deep, plus base

Zephyrus

2009-12-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

22" high x 34" wide x 19" deep, a wall-mounted sculpture of windblown strips of satin finished anodized aluminum.

U.S.S. Aren't

2009-12-06T19:37:00.000-08:00

8" high x 28" wide x 11" deep, wall-mounted (32x24x20)

Thinly Veiled

2009-12-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

36" high x 36" wide x 6" deep, a wall-mounted shaped metal sculpture; flocked fabric-like aluminum strips hang in front of a mirrored stainless steel surface.

Sirocco

2009-12-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

8" high x 8" wide x 8" deep, a painted shaped aluminum and Corian maquette

Reflections

2009-12-06T19:29:00.000-08:00

14" high x 12" wide x 4" deep,wall-mounted (16x16x6)

Lingua Franca

2009-12-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

24" high x 30" wide x 10" deep, a paper maquette

Knight's Light and Helper

2009-12-06T19:19:00.000-08:00

32" high x 16" wide x 16" deep, functional art, a candelabrum of medium density fiberboard with a melamine surface combined with a plunger.

Justice for All

2009-12-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

8" high x 5" wide x 5" deep, a painted shaped aluminum and Corian maquette

Introspection

2009-12-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

18" high x 16" wide x 4" deep, wall-mounted (20x20x10)

Hinomaru

2009-12-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

8" high x 8" wide x 10" deep, a painted shaped aluminum and Corian maquette

Green Piece

2009-12-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

Corian Maquette,12" high x 12" wide x 9" deep, pedestal

Gossamer Gyre

2009-12-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

20" high x 33" wide x15" deep, a wall-mounted shaped metal sculpture; painted.

Disarmament

2009-12-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

12" high x 12" wide x 12" deep, pedestal(18x18x18")

Decor Decorum

2009-12-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

36" high x 36" wide x 12" deep, a wall-mounted sculptural spoof on the color coordinated interior--art to match the wallpaper, drapery, or upholstery.

Crimson Lining

2009-12-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

30" high x 18" wide x 12" deep, a wall-mounted sculpture of shaped strips of anodized aluminum painted on one side.

Can of Worms

2009-12-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

36" high x 36" wide x 14" deep, wall-mounted

Before Bactrian

2009-12-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

26" high x 14" wide x 11" deep, a wall-mounted sculpture of painted strips of shaped aluminum with an overlay of camels; product placement is the subtext.

Ambiguity

2009-12-06T14:11:00.000-08:00

12" high x 12" wide x 4" deep,wall-mounted (20x20x10)

Richard's Book on Saarinen made the November ’08 cover of Metropolis Magazine

2009-12-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

November 2008 • Metropolis Magazine

Team Eero

Inspired by Saarinen’s drive to “do more,” the young architects in his office reshaped postwar America. Today their approach to problem-solving offers important lessons.

By Paul Makovsky, Belinda Lanks & Martin C. Pedersen

Posted November 19, 2008
ICONIC WORKPLACE
EERO SAARINEN AND ASSOCIATES
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1953–1961

At the time of his death in 1961 at the age of 51, Eero Saarinen was falling out of critical favor. It took more than three decades for the start of a revival, but with recent exhibitions, symposia, and books, the tide has finally turned for this neglected master. He was clearly an immense talent—perhaps a genius—but that talent was backed up by an impressive roster of colleagues who worked in his office in Bloom field Hills, Michigan. Architects and designers such as Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, Cesar Pelli, Robert Venturi, Ralph Rapson, Gunnar Birkerts, and Niels Diffrient are some of the familiar names, but many others—among them, Chuck Bassett, Warren Platner, Richard Knight, Balthazar Korab, Don Petitt, Gene Festa, John Buenz, Willo Von Moltke, and Leonard Parker—also contributed to the firm’s success, working on models, preparing slide presentations, and conducting research.

“Eero had marvelous self-confidence, but he also questioned a lot of things,” says Knight, author of Saarinen’s Quest: A Memoir (William Stout Publishers). For the Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, at Yale University, Eero did some planning research (which was not a part of his contract) and discovered that the school was made up of marvelously tight spaces. “The folks assigned to the project—Cesar Pelli was one—did these footprint studies, black shapes on a white background that showed important piazzas that came to Eero’s or Kevin’s mind,” Knight says. “They put them up around the room, just as sort of grist for the mill.”

One of the office’s signature tools was large architectural models, often placed about four feet off the ground so that team members could stick their heads into the space and look around. Diffrient remembers seeing Saarinen and Roche crawling around on the model for the TWA terminal, crafting it out of shingled layers of cardboard and tape to get a feel for the forms. The modeling sessions, which ran late into the night, and the occasional (OK, frequent) parties resulted in projects such as the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the CBS Building, the TWA terminal, and Dulles Airport’s main terminal. We asked former employees to talk about their experiences in the office and the unique Saarinen process that created these iconic buildings.

KEVIN ROCHE
Eero was always very contemplative. He always wanted to research the project to its ultimate point. He had a tremendous intensity for searching out: What’s the reason? Why is it there? What can we challenge? What do people want? It was a great lesson, because it established a basis for design, which is entirely different from the idea of sketching.

Early on, the office was quite disorganized. So after the Miller House, which I got a lot of compliments on, I fell into the role of taking over the projects and organizing them. There would be a design team, and then John [Dinkeloo] and I worked with them.

I would assemble the material and bring it to Eero and say, “You have to look at this.” We’d talk and then I’d say, “Now you have to look at this…” I tried to organize it so that he would look at all aspects of the job. I used to say, “If the problem was to plow a field, Eero would dig a hole.”

TWA was the big switch. Our office was getting bigger, and the organization for that project had to be intense. We had to get additional space so that we could build models, because you couldn’t design these things on paper. Cesar [Pelli] headed up that team, and I developed the idea of large models as a way of communicating, a way for Eero to see. Showing him ideas in three dimensions was the way to get him involved, to sway him. The basic ideas, of course, were his. And he was interested in the pragmatic aspects: how long it took a plane to taxi; where passengers arrived; how long they spent at the ticket counter. When we traveled, Eero went around with a stopwatch, measuring everything: “This took four seconds more than last time.” Of course, I was just waiting for the goddam plane to take off so I could get a martini. He was fully in control of the whole process. It was his intelligence, ability, attentiveness, penetration, and guts. And we were lucky to be participating.
—As told to Paul Makovsky and Martin C. Pedersen

CESAR PELLI
TWA was being run by another chap, Leon Yulkowski, but Eero had decided to review the scheme, and there was a problem that he found devilish: the lines of forces in the columns were such that the columns were cross-legged. When he did cross-legged columns, they just looked like “X”s, or like people crossing their legs. He didn’t like that, so he asked me to transform them. I spent about two months all by myself in a room that he had rented on top of a gas station—at that time I was the only person there—building a three-dimensional model. It was like sculpting these big legs. And he liked it, so he then asked me: “How would a straight wall next to it look?” So we started curving the wall. If the wall curves, what happens when it turns the corner? How is the roof? That’s how the huge model grew, around those legs that I had built. That was a very exciting moment for me—it allowed me to pour myself into this little piece of the whole building, within Eero’s general vision.

Research was integral to almost everything we did. There was always an investigation of another way of doing something, a way that had not been used before. When we were doing the Stiles and Morse Colleges, one of the first things Eero did was have his estimator estimate how much [Yale’s] Branford College would have cost to build in 1961, and the estimator figured out that it would cost about $100 per square foot. Eero’s budget was $21 a square foot, about a fifth of what Branford would have cost. So he and John Dinkeloo came up with this wall that was extraordinarily economical—cheaper than a brick wall. The approach Eero had seen before he died would have given a rougher texture, with great depth in the wall, but the technology failed. The concrete was supposed to be washed with water at very high pressure so as to expose two inches of stone. But it didn’t work, didn’t wash evenly, and then that also meant that, when you’re on the second or third tier, all of this concrete washed down the existing walls and created an impossible cleaning problem. So that idea was abandoned, but that’s the approach he had expected and that he did not get. It’s a great pity.
—As told to Belinda Lanks

GUNNAR BIRKERTS
When I arrived in Bloomfield Hills, Eliel Saarinen, the father, had just died. The ashes were still warm in the conference room. So the team became very important. We were quite close. His method was different from what I was used to. He looked at a lot of different ideas. That’s why model-building was so prevalent in that office, because Eero could not always make up his mind. There were many models built. If the idea evolved, the model changed. Other offices built models to show the client or gain approval. We built them so that Eero could see them and make selections through a process of elimination. Another thing that was going on was he needed approval from his girlfriends. He liked other people’s opinions. I wasn’t used to that.

But through this process, we arrived at a refined result because there were so many people involved in the solution. Many nights, as we were leaving work, he’d give us the same problem—five of us—and say, “Come in tomorrow and see how many you can develop.” The next morning, everyone was pinning up their ideas, and we would talk. I don’t know about the initial process for Eero, but whatever he brought in, he wanted to display, get opinions, and then develop them from there. It was a unique process. And we were all part of it.
—As told to Suzanne LaBarre

BALTHAZAR KORAB
I started working in the office in 1955, and the IBM building in Minnesota was one of my first projects. Peter Carter and I worked on a colored-enamel-panel scheme for the facade. Peter did diagonal patterns while I fooled around with the vertical, rectangular patterns. We pinned our schemes on the wall and then Eero decided to go with the rectangular ones.

I was quite skillful with photography, and for our models we used smoke-and-mirror effects—and I mean that literally. For the TWA project, we had a model where you could almost stick your head into half the shell. So out of that half model, we added the mirrors and cutouts of people; then we blew smoke to create depth, and took the photograph. It gave you an impression of being in the space. The atmospheric and sculptural effects were beautifully expressed through photography. The clients were shown a slide show of the photographs, and the effect was so successful that they bought the whole project without even seeing the model. Photog raphy was a very important part of the process, and everything we did was, of course, predigital. For the IBM offices in Poughkeepsie, we photographed cutout figures in the model. There’s a paper cutout of Gene Festa and Jill Mitchell standing, and the fellow sitting at the desk is John Dinkeloo. The scenery in the background is really a slide of nature that was projected on a white wall. Very often we didn’t show the models to the clients; we would show them a slide show.

We worked continuously, and we had great fun, really, because the office was small. Because there was a baby boom at the time, many of the designers had to quit to work for larger, better-paying firms to provide for their families. Each time someone left, we had a party, serving martinis in this crystal searchlight that was three or four feet wide. We had good times. They used to refer to the office as Eero’s all-night drive-in because it never stopped working.

The Morse and Stiles dormitories really showed Eero’s talent. He was able to have a Gothic building on a Gothic campus without using the Gothic arches. When it came to the Concordia Theological Seminary, Eero did a little German village with pitched roofs and created a beautiful atmosphere that contributed to the remarkable academic environment of this religious campus. And then there’s the John Deere building, which I just love. It’s a Mies building without being Mies. It’s glass and steel but with a sculptural quality to it, and it was the first use of Cor-Ten for a building. That was the genius of Eero Saarinen. He could apply his language to the full expression of the building.
—As told to Paul Makovsky

ROBERT VENTURI
My first job out of college, I worked for a year with a guy named Oscar Stonorov in Philadelphia. I also knew Louis Kahn, who was barely known then. Kahn couldn’t stand Stonorov, but he liked me and said, “I have to get you out of there.” So he recommended me to Eero. I wasn’t particularly a Saarinen fan, but I went and learned a lot there. Eero was sort of eclectic and used the vocabulary of other architects—different ones for different buildings. He did that for almost every project. I am not so negative about that kind of eclecticism now as I was then. At the time, I thought it was rather arbitrary. I was a bit snob bish. But I’ve come to admire his St. Louis Arch very much. I consider it equivalent in terms of urban architectural quality to the Washington Monument.
—As told to Martin C. Pedersen

RICHARD KNIGHT
When I started, in 1957, I was not the person with the greatest experience there. They hadn’t figured out what kind of security bars to put down on the street level for the American embassy in Oslo, so I did a decent scheme that wasn’t penitentiary-looking. Eero didn’t pay heed to me at all. And I thought, Geez, what’s going on here? But, luckily, Gene Festa, a very capable guy, drew me aside and said, “The name of the game here is this: First of all, we’re here to help Eero. Don’t ever get your hopes up that you’re going to be able to point to something that you designed. You’re just part of the process.” And then he said, “If you’re working on something, you can’t have too many alternatives.” So I went back to the drawing board, and cranked out ten or twenty more.

There were about thirty people in the office, so it was still not so large that he and Aline [Eero’s wife] couldn’t still have a party at their house. All the pictures of Eero show him as a pretty serious-looking guy, but he really loved to party! At the parties, of course, his favorite topic obviously was architecture. He was just such a focused guy. One time, Paul Kennon asked Eero what he felt was the most impor tant ingredient to doing exceptional architecture? And without flinching, Eero said, “Just to do more. You can never do too much.” And just looking at what he accomplished, I’d say that perfectly characterized his work. Heavy advice, I thought.
—As told to Paul Makovsky

NIELS DIFFRIENT
I was hired on for my model-making and drafting abilities. I remember the office had no air-conditioning. On really hot days, the answer was to bring in a big washtub with a twenty-five-pound chunk of ice in it filled with lemonade to cool us off, but somebody got a few bottles of gin and poured it in. It was a lively place, and it was a major share of my own enlightenment and education.

What did I learn from working in the office? The number one thing was to take design seriously. How much can you do to advance a notion of design if you really work at it? Eero had ideas for an office chair using some of the principles of the Womb chair. He had already made a handful of small-scale simple models that he wanted to get into full scale. Before I got to the office in the morning, Eero himself the evening before must have cut—out of paper and cardboard sticks—fifteen or so one-quarter-scale models of chair ideas he had in mind that I would then pick up on. He never stopped. He was a creative fool. He didn’t land on a first good scheme and stay with it. The minute he had a scheme, he’d move to another one. That’s why it was very hard for Eero to make any money. He was always telling me how to do something better. We did a lot of talking about form. When two designers are talking, it’s not exactly a literary narrative; it’s a lot of grunts, pointing, and hand waving. A lot of the working techniques I employ today had their genesis with Eero, that’s what I meant when I said I learned how to take design seriously.
—As told to Paul Makovsky

Science In A Sardine Can - Pickle Experiments at Sanchez Laboratories

2009-10-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

In the early 1990's Richard partnered with Judith Lynch, the lead scientist at Sanchez Laboratories in San Francisco for some strange research.
This one depicts the truth behind electrified pickles.

Click here to watch the video!

Santa Cachepot

2009-10-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

Richard returns in the guise of a Santa Cachepot.