Roadtrip - Fuller/ Noguchi and Eero Saarinen

This past Sunday a few of the Cleveland LAUNCH members decided to head up to Detroit to check out the Buckminster Fuller/ Isamu Noguchi exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum and the Eero Saarinen exhibit at Cranbrook Art Museum.

As a special guest (having worked with Eero and student of Fuller, as well as being a Cleveland architectural institution himself) Peter van Dijk was able to join us.

With Detroit being only 3 hours from Cleveland the LAUNCH team decided to take its first impromptu roadtrip and check out the 'local' exhibits. The Buckminster Fuller/Isamu Noguchi exhibit was first on our list. Included was an actual Dymaxion House as well as some sculpture, a Dymaxion Car, some tensigrity models and a few films.

Heading North for half an hour brought us to Boomfield Hills, home of Eero Saarinen's old office and Cranbrook CEC. Unfortunately our Cranbrook alum was unable to make this particular trip (for he no doubt would have steered us to some fine establishments for sustenance, instead we had flaming table side cheeseburgers). The campus of Cranbrook is rather amazing, sprinkled with fine buildings, sculptures and parks. I was lucky enough to visit once during Graduate school at Kent State and was immediately jealous that I did not take that option.

Regardless the Saarinen exhibit was huge. Various models, construction drawings, full scale mock-ups, photos and films overwhelmed the senses. I was trapped admiring the details and hand drawn construction documents for the TWA terminal for quite some time. Once in a while Pete would pull one of us over to a particular exhibit to tell us a story about someone who worked on it or working on the project himself. There were cartoons and photos of the staff on a far wall which were typically being admired by those of us in the profession. Luck also aligned for one of Pete's old coworkers from Saarinen's office to happen to be at the exhibit at the same time as us and we were lucky enough to be introduced.

In fact the whole trip was amazing, in fact I am more than willing to go back. There is something about seeing an exhibition of successful and impressive work that really does invigorate and excite me. I am constantly surprised at how simple it is to really grab some fellows and head out for a quick daytrip to admire some well done work.

I am quite sure that the LAUNCH group will be organizing more trips to come.
*cough cough*

resources:
"Reconsidering Eero" Metropolis Magazine
The Buckminster Fuller exhibit ends the 15th of January
The Saarinen Cranbrook exhibit ends the 30th of March