In an earlier article, I presented images of the El Aurassi hotel in Algiers, designed by Moretti, that I took in 2006. Since then, some names keep running through my head: Saarinen, Eames, and all those who shaped the architecture of those years.
Looking for their archives, I came across the work of Balthazar Korab, held at the Library of Congress in Washington and largely unknown to the general public. I started retrieving these images, sorting them and piecing together the story behind each one. Here is the first result.
A building sold before it existed
In the mid-fifties, to convince an airline to fund a terminal that does not exist yet, a young architect takes out his Leica. He photographs models made of cardboard, clay and wire. He adds smoke and mirrors: "smoke-and-mirror effects, and I mean that literally," he would say later. The clients watch the slideshow. They buy the project without ever having seen the model.
That man is Balthazar Korab. The building is the TWA terminal at JFK airport in New York. Seventy years later, you can book a room there.
The one who photographed from the inside
In 1955, Korab joined the office of Eero Saarinen, the man behind the Gateway Arch, Dulles and the Miller House. He is an architect first. Then he is asked to photograph the models, and little by little he becomes the eye of the house.
On my drive, the Korab folder holds more than two thousand images, over a third of them for Saarinen. Not finished buildings: models, construction sites, the team at work. Saarinen ends up depending on these images to judge form and space; Korab would say that the camera and the person holding it had become an integral part of the design process.
I am starting with TWA.
What is certain
TWA wants a terminal that tells the excitement of travel. Saarinen starts drawing in 1956 and refuses the usual rectangular box. The office builds models by the dozen, in wire, cardboard and clay.
Where does the final shape come from, those concrete shells that open like wings? The legend says Saarinen pressed his thumb into a grapefruit at breakfast. Another version credits Kevin Roche, who supposedly sawed a model in two. Nobody has settled it, and I find that just fine.
Construction begins in 1959. The roof is poured in one piece: five days and five nights of concrete without a break. In April 1961, standing before the bare concrete, Saarinen compares it to the Baths of Caracalla: beautiful even in ruin. He dies the same year. Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo finish the building, which opens in 1962.
The model, ancestor of 3D rendering
What fascinates me as much as the building is the model, and the way it is photographed. The camera drops to floor level, at the height of a passer-by, so that the white shells look monumental. Behind, a midnight blue background so that the white stands out, and studio light that sculpts the volumes like on a theatre stage.
And then there are the little figures: cut-out silhouettes, cars, airplanes. In a close-up of the interior, a single silhouette in a suit gives the scale. Without it, you could not tell whether you are looking at a scale model or a cathedral.
This is what I still do today, with a computer: build a model, place a camera, light it, add a human for scale. Here, everything is done by hand, with cardboard, lamps and a camera. It looks like a render, before renders existed.
On the construction site, the same forms return, at the scale of a building.
The iconic airport that became a hotel
The terminal was an immediate success, then a problem. Jets became too big, airports too large. TWA was bought in 2001, and the terminal closed.
It could have disappeared. Already listed, it was added to the list of America's most endangered sites. The solution came from JetBlue and MCR Hotels: Saarinen's building became the lobby, two glass towers flank it, and the old boarding tubes now lead to the rooms. The hotel opened in 2019.
A building sold by photos of models. Then reopened, almost sixty years after its inauguration, so that you can sleep in it. In between: concrete, and a photographer who was there.
What I do with them at Beau Edition
In my career, I was a darkroom printer and photographer, then a 3D rendering specialist. Looking at these scans is going back to an era when taking the time to do things well meant something else.
On my shelves there is Eero Saarinen by Allan Temko, published in 1962 by George Braziller. Its cover is a lith image printed in a single color, in flat tones, like many book covers of the fifties and sixties: it was also a way to save money. I applied the same principle to details of the building taken from the Korab archive, and you find yourself back in the aesthetic of the Fondation Maeght posters or Blue Note record sleeves. This is the Ink & Concrete series, an original creation by Beau Edition.
For architecture lovers, I also selected a few original images and cleaned the scans the way I would have under the enlarger: dust and scratches removed, levels, filtered color, and the edges of the negative when possible. They make up the TWA Flight Center series. I find the images of the models particularly beautiful.
Discover our series Ink & Concrete and TWA Flight Center, or contact us for B2B and bespoke projects.
Photos: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Balthazar Korab Collection.
Julien Claessens, Beau Edition
