Luke Tozer thinks Eero Saarinen’s design for Dulles International Airport has wings, whereas his effort for the US Embassy in London represents a bad day at the office
The majestic Dulles International Airport in Washington is a triumph of structural expression meeting architectural rhetoric. It is a building that inspires flight and makes starting a trip on an aeroplane a joy rather than a chore. Designed by Eero Saarinen in 1958, with Kevin Roche in his office at the time, the curve of the roof gracefully suggests an upturned wing and was designed in bays, to be capable of extension (which it subsequently was).
It is clearly divided with the upper floor devoted to departures and the lower floor to arrivals which helps to avoid the endless travelators needed in other airports. Clarity of thought and care and attention to detail and structural gymnastics continues inside and it really is a delight to arrive or leave the US through it, even on the specially designed lounge buses that take you to your plane.
This flies me in to my blunder, the American Embassy in London. Also designed by Saarinen in the same period, the US Embassy was built in 1957-60 to a competition-winning design - a brief which sought a scheme “which would engender good will through distinguished architectural quality”. Well, it certainly missed that.
As an expression of a constructional technique it is perhaps of mild technological interest but judged on the basis of its architectural merits, it is found sorely wanting. When the American Embassy moves to the new Kieran Timberlake building in Nine Elms, I can only hope the new owner reinterprets what was clearly an off day at the Saarinen office and has some radical thoughts on how to update and reuse the building.
Luke Tozer is a director of Pitman Tozer Architects
WONDER
Washington Dulles International Airport was designed by Saarinen in 1958 and opened in 1962. The design included a landscaped lake, a low-rise hotel and a row of office buildings along the north side of the main parking lot. It is named after John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under Dwight D. Eisenhower. The main contractor was Ammann & Whitney.
BLUNDER
The US Embassy, occupies the whole west side of Grosvenor Square and was designed by Saarinen and completed in 1960. A statue of a gilded aluminum bald eagle by sculptor Theodore Roszak sits on top of the building. It was listed, grade II, in 2009 following a review of its merits by English Heritage and a campaign of support by the Twentieth Century Society.
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