TWA Flight Center

Eero Saarinen

Eero Saarinen was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer. Saarinen designed many headquarters and other buildings for major American corporations and universities including IBM, CBS and MIT. He also designed several iconic furniture pieces manufactured by the Knoll furniture company.

TWA Flight Center

Saarinen is best known for his 1962 Trans World Airlines Flight Center at the former Idlewild International Airport on Long Island, New York (now called John F. Kennedy International Airport). At that time, all of the major American airlines including TWA, Pan Am, Eastern, Northwest, United, National and American commissioned America’s leading architects to design new terminals for Idlewild to be built between 1959 and 1969. Of these, only Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center survives – uplifting, hopeful and breathtakingly beautiful. With its massive tilted glass and arched shell structure, it brings to mind a hunting hawk in flight.

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