Designing TWA

Designing TWA: Eero Saarinen’s Airport Terminal in New York
Kornel Ringli
Park Books, 2018



Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 11 inches | 224 pages | 240 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-3906027753 | $60.00

Publisher Description:

When it opened in 1962, the TWA Flight Center at New York’s JFK airport was a sensation. Created by Eero Saarinen with a distinctly birdlike design, it was instantly seen as a striking emblem of the romance of air travel. More than half a century later, it remains a beloved icon of modern architecture.

Designing TWA is the first book to tell the whole story of Saarinen’s building, from its early planning through its closing in 2001 after the takeover of TWA by American Airlines. Documenting the terminal’s commission, planning, building, and use, architect Kornel Ringli reveals the constant tension between the operational needs of the airline and Saarinen’s visionary imaginings—revealing the TWA building as an incredible architectural achievement that nonetheless failed to meet the day-to-day demands of the business it housed. Lavishly illustrated with archival photographs, Designing TWA is an unprecedented look behind the scenes at the making of a modern masterpiece.

dDAB Commentary:

Last month I went on a press tour of the new TWA Hotel with the various designers involved, writing about the project for World-Architects. Basically, the project consists of the restoration and reuse of Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center, two new wings flanking it with 512 hotel rooms, and a conference center submerged beneath the "tarmac," where an old airplane has been outfitted as a lounge. Thoroughly retro, sometimes to a fault (I'm thinking of the old phones that exist solely to spew old TWA recordings, among other things), the reuse is all-around amazing – a must-see for any architect or fan of modern architecture making their way through JFK. While there, people should also head to the gift shop in the old Flight Center and pick up a copy of this book, first published in 2015 and then reprinted last year; that's what I did on my visit. The book, arising from Kornel Ringli's 2012 doctoral thesis at ETH Zurich, is a illuminating look at an icon of modern architecture.

Those looking for a straightforward history of the TWA Flight Center might be disappointed though, since Ringli's text – pared down considerably from his dissertation – is polemical. He uses the building as an ideal example of mid-century business, branding, and communications. This doesn't mean that the history of the building's design and realization isn't told; it is, but through the "viewpoints of business organization (corporate architecture), design (corporate design), and media (corporate communications)," as described in Ringli's introduction. His text is accompanied by hundreds of illustrations, most of which I've never seen before, and these alone make the book worthwhile, especially for people who are fans of modern architecture, Saarinen, and aviation. Most illuminating of the book's three parts is the one on corporate communications, which focuses on Saarinen's wife, Aline, who used her contacts from the New York Times and other places to shape her husband's public persona. She helped turn him into a serious architect in the eyes of the public, not just a furniture designer, doing so even after his premature death at the age of 51 in 1961, one year before the TWA Flight Center opened to the public.

Spreads:


Author Bio:

Kornel Ringli, born 1972, studied architecture and did his PhD at ETH Zurich. He works with a Zürich-based non-profit organization for real estate management and as a freelance architectural publicist.

Purchase Links:
(Note: Books bought via these links send a few cents to this blog, keeping it afloat.)