New Life for Saarinen's Terminal 5

Eero Saarinen's iconic Terminal 5 at Kennedy Airport moved a step closer to reopening. Closed since October 2001, the main terminal building, which was completed in 1962 for TWA, is being incorporated into jetBlue's new terminal at the airport. From Friday's New York Times story:

The [Port] authority’s board approved a $19 million project to perform the essential repairs needed to allow travelers to pass through the 46-year-old terminal on their way to the enormous new JetBlue Airways terminal that wraps around the T.W.A. building in a crescent shape.

Both buildings are known as Terminal 5. The hope is to open them simultaneously this fall, said William R. DeCota, the aviation director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. If not, he said, the T.W.A. building — an official landmark designed by the architectural giant Eero Saarinen — would reopen soon thereafter. Except for a brief stint as an exhibition gallery in 2004, the Saarinen terminal has been closed since T.W.A. ended operations in October 2001. The main terminal building, called the headhouse, and two tubular departure-arrival corridors have been preserved. Those corridors will connect the Saarinen and JetBlue terminals.

“When Terminal 5 launches in fall,” JetBlue says on its T508.com Web site, “customers will have the option of checking in at a JetBlue kiosk in the Saarinen building and taking in this landmarked architectural wonder’s exquisite modernist design on their way to our new terminal.” The airline has already adopted the gull-winged profile of the T.W.A. building into its Terminal 5 logo.

Herman Miller's Discovering Design

This Herman Miller site is cool. Simple as that. The site features an interactive web of the key people, places, ideas and products of mid-century modern design. You can find images of the designs, vintage ads and catalogues, and video and audi clips. Click on the image of Ray and Charles Eames on their motorcycle to find a video from 1956 of the couple unveiling their lounge chair and ottoman on national televsion. Click on the picture of George Nelson to hear an audio clip of Nelson admitting how he did not even design his famous ball clock. Can you say Noguchi?

Noguchi in New York

Next time you are in New York, check out the Noguchi Museum housed in a former photo-engraving factory in Long Island City. The museum opened in 1985 and presents a comprehensive collection of artist-designer-sculptor Isamu Noguchi's works. The building is undergoing some renovations, but all of the exhibits and programs are open to the public.

All Eames All the Time

If you are looking for all things Eames, check out Steve Cabella's site, eamescollector.com. Cabella has been gathering Eames Things, as he calls his collection, for the past 30 years. The site has links to articles from the 1940s, '50s and '60s, info on the Charles and Ray Eames' films and contributions to Hollywood and what he describes as "Eames Moments," or "interesting facts, details and stories that make up some of the Eames 'connections' one finds in the history of the design world."

Modern for the Masses

Affordable modern housing for the masses. Wasn't that the original thinking behind the modern movement? The philosophy of the Bauhaus style was to create the "perfect worker housing," as Tom Wolfe wrote in From Bauhaus to Our House. Today, a new breed of architects are seeking to create modern, well-designed and affordable housing for those who can't afford to buy the homes designed by the Bauhaus denizens (here's one in Andover, Mass., by Marcel Breuer) or their successors. Read the Wall Street Journal article detailing these new modern projects.

Saving Modernism

If you have an idea to help preserve a modern architectural landmark or are looking for financial or technical assistance to help save such a site, check out the Modernism at Risk program established in 2006 by the World Monuments Fund and Knoll.

Arts and Achitecture Archives

I love the online archives of Arts and Architecture magazine, which sponsored the case House Study Program under editor and publisher John Entenza. You can view the table of contents from all the issues from 1945 to 1967 and a selected article from each issue. You can also view the entire articles of each of the Case Study Houses. If the web collection is not enough, you can buy the Case Study House book by Taschen featuring the entire collection of homes for $200. Taschen is expecred to publish all the issues of A&A in book form this spring. I wonder how much that one is going to cost.