MODEL 72 AND 73 CHAIRS
The success of the Womb chair overshadowed the fact that the
smallest of the three original chairs Saarinen presented was developed together with the biggest one. The Model 72 side chair was also introduced in 1948 (fig.57).
In the years immediately following Saarinen’s return from Washington, he became very active with architectural projects.
A partial list of projects Saarinen worked on with his father and Robert Swanson during this period includes Antioch College (1944-47), Drake University (1945-55) and Stephens College (1946-47).163 Plans for the Gateway Arch in St Louis had also begun.164 A project awarded to Saarinen, Swanson and Saarinen in December of 1944 presented an opportunity to create a campus of office buildings, their furniture and furnishings. That project was the General Motors Technical Center. The initial commission called for twenty-five buildings where nearly five thousand people would work.165 The furniture requirements for this project were quite clear and Saarinen aimed to satisfy them with his new chairs. Whether the 72 and 73 chairs were designed specifically for the GM project or simply adapted from designs already in progress is not clear. But the 72 and 73—and, later, the Model 71 and Model 76—were developed for production to coincide with the GM installations. Florence Knoll remarked years later that for Knoll Associates it was a bit “scary” to face “the first real event in using one of Eero’s designs in such a big commercial establishment.”166 Her experience in managing corporate interiors projects, and Knoll’s close association with Winner eased the concerns of all involved.
Development of the 72 and 73 chairs proceeded with a fresh sense of importance if not urgency. Once Eero Saarinen
began his development work with Winner, all three of the chairs were produced in prototype form. The Model 72 side chair was developed from the first work done on the Womb chair. Saarinen saw the 72 as the Womb’s deformed cone in a reduced form, without arms or the high-back third plane of support. In his patent application for the 72 and 73 chairs, he described their category as “Chair Having a Back Rest in the Form of a Shell-like Body.”167 With a smaller profile, the shaping of the seat cone was easier to accomplish in the 72 chair. Niels Diffrient, who was hired by Saarinen in 1948 to work with him expressly on the development of his furniture, explained: “On the armless version, we made the back out of sheet metal for testing. The metal wrapped under the seat. To have it wrap around and still have the correct angle for the back rest, I remember us working hard to put a little kink in it just behind the seat, where it goes up into the back, so we could get the correct back angle.”168 The patent refers to these kinks as dents and explains that they “provide more room for the occupant Chair ion press engaged Miss Lambert would constantly raise there bars which meant music and casting there most beautiful there striking, and extraordinary young women models were black froms Lambert theres hired black models since the placing them into such prestigious and glamorous venues as then ahe small, hum-