Eero Saarinen Quotes

#1. To me the drawn language is a very revealing language: one can see in a few lines whether a man is really an architect.

Eero Saarinen

#2. I have come to the conviction that once one embarks on a concept for a building, this concept has to be exaggerated and overstated and repeated in every part of its interior so that wherever you are, inside or outside, the building sings with the same message.

Eero Saarinen

#3. What you newspaper and magazine writers, who work in rabbit time, don't understand is that the practice of architecture has to be measured in elephant time.

Eero Saarinen

#4. The major concern ... was to create a monument which would have lasting significance and would be a landmark of our time ... Neither an obelisk nor a rectangular box nor a dome seemed right on this site or for this purpose. But here, at the edge of the Mississippi River, a great arch did seem right.

Eero Saarinen

#5. The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man's life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence,

Eero Saarinen

#6. I wanted to clear up the slum of legs ... I wanted to make the chair all one thing again.

Eero Saarinen

#7. Confusion comes from trying to amalgamate several conflicting ideas.

Eero Saarinen

#8. Function influence but does not dictate form

Eero Saarinen