Saarinen’s Shell Game: Tensions, Structures, and Sounds at MIT

Abstract

For all of the criticism of Eero Saarinen’s Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel, they exist as a highly focused moment of deliberate experimentation with geometric form in materials old and new which both contrasted the typical forms of rational modernism and resonated deeply with the modernist quest for the incorporation of novel structures. This paper explores the metaphorical and literal tensions through three dichotomies: geometrical ones with implications for acoustics, programmatic ones with implications for use, and structural ones between the appearances and actual structural actions of the architecture. I seek to illuminate how the geometric issues of both buildings relate to structural optimization. I also approach the Auditorium and Chapel from the roles of having been a performer and composer of instrumental and vocal music for both spaces while earning degrees at MIT in architecture. The simple act of listening defies one’s typical expectations in both spaces, and the dichotomies of geometry, use, and structure illuminate the relationship of sound to place in these architectural spaces.