Mid-Century Executive Conference Armchair by Eero Saarinen for Knoll International / Nordiska Kompaniet, 1960s

Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) was a Finnish-born American industrial designer and architect who helped pioneer the neo-futurism style and redefining modernism in midcentury America. Son to influential architect Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950) and sculpturist and textile designer Lola Gesellius Saarinen (1879-1968), Saarinen from an early age exhibited a strong interest in design and architecture.  At the age of thirteen, he and his family emigrated to America, where he went on to study sculpture and furniture design at the Bauhaus-inspired Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. (His father taught there as well.) There he befriended future design luminaries Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Florence Knoll (née Schust, b. 1917). In 1929, he continued his education at Paris’s Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and subsequently at Yale University, graduating with a degree in architecture in 1934.

In 1936, Saarinen joined his father’s architectural practice, which was renamed Eero Saarinen & Associates after his father passed in 1950. His well-known projects include the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri (1947); the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan (1956); the main terminal of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. (1958); and the TWA Terminal at Kennedy International Airport (1962).

Beyond Saarinen’s many architectural accomplishments, he also maintained a successful career in furniture design. In 1940, working in collaboration with Charles Eames, he designed a collection of plywood chairs, which won first prize in all categories for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Though the chairs never made it into production, Saarinen designed many other iconic pieces for friends Hans and Florence Knoll, including the Grasshopper Lounge Chair and Ottoman (1946), Womb Chair and Ottoman (1948), and the Tulip Collection (1956)—arguably his most famous series which featured side chairs  and armchairs , as well as coffee , dining , and side tables .

Saarinen died at the age of 51 during surgery to remove a brain tumor. His business partners Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo at Saarinen & Associates completed his ten remaining projects.

Designing in postwar America, Saarinen is known for introducing curvilinear and organically-inspired forms into both his architecture and industrial designs. Over the course of his career, Saarinen received many awards and accolades, including becoming a fellow of the American Institute of Architecture in 1952 and winning the AIA Gold Medal posthumously in 1962. Saarinen’s designs have been featured in exhibitions around the world, including the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. and the Museum of Finnish Architecture in New York.

Stirred by the eye-catching grandeur and service possibilities of early-century Parisian and Londoner high-end shopping, Swedish businessmen Josef Sachs (1872-1949) and Karl M. Lundberg established Nordiska Kompaniet in 1902, laying the foundation for what would become Scandinavia’s first and, in time, most influential entry into the realm of luxury retail.

In 1915—after a twelve-year jaunt in a repurposed space at Stureplan Plaza and following Lundberg’s departure from the company—Sachs began construction of an entirely new and substantially more opulent store on Stockholm’s major Hamngatan corridor. The building was designed by one of the country’s leading architects at the time, Ferdinand Boberg (1860-1946), of Stockholm’s Rosenbad and Central Post Office fame. Nordiska Kompaniet emerged as Stockholm’s premier department store: modern and multi-tiered, centrally located, offering a lavish smorgasbord of services and Nordic-inspired merchandise capable of enticing the region’s most elite clientele. 

Beyond jewelry, fashion, cosmetics, food, Sweden’s first escalator, and endless panoramas of mahogany (which, noteworthy upon its opening, lined most of its interior), Nordiska Kompaniet Hamngatan offered shoppers its own line of custom-made furnishings crafted in workshops in Nyköping (est. 1904). The design aesthetic reflected the general ethos of the company: high quality production, pared-down lines with touches of genteel elegance, and, above all, an air of exclusivity.

As the century progressed, the in-house design and production wing of the Nordiska Kompaniet operation attracted some of Scandinavia’s most salient design innovators. Swedish architect-designer Axel Einar Hjorth headed up Nordiska Kompaniet’s furniture and interiors department between 1927 and 1938, a clout-expanding time for the company on the international stage. He directed Nordiska Kompaniet’s showcases at a number of important industry exhibitions, such as the 1929 World Fair in Barcelona, the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, and the 1933 World Fair in Chicago. Along the way, Hjorth garnered acclaim for his often pine-crafted interiors designed for a range of prestigious public and private clients, including Stockholm’s Gunnar Asplund-designed city library and a train carriage for the Shah of Persia. During Hjorth’s tenure, Nordiska Kompaniet commissioned iconic work from Asplund—namely, his tubular steel Karmstol Side Chair and GA-2 Armchair (both 1931)—as well as esteemed Swedish architect-designer Carl Malmsten, who created furnishings for Stockholm’s Concert Hall (1928), the House of the League of Nations in Geneva (1934), and more.

While bespoke interior design in public spaces remained Nordiska Kompaniet’s main focus in the midcentury—especially in 1950s, when Nordiska Kompaniet furniture filled Swedish banks, hotels, embassies, steamers, and restaurants—this era also saw the rise of the company’s furniture designs for serial production. Of particular note is the Trivaserie (alternatively, Triva-Bygg), designed by Elias Svedberg and launched in Malmö in 1944, which featured standard furniture items distributed in flat packages to be constructed by consumers themselves at home (one of the first instances of the knock-down furniture later made famous by fellow Swedish heavyweight Ikea).

Under designer Lena Larsson’s direction from 1947-1965, the Trivaserie line was subsumed into Nordiska Kompaniet’s experimental NK-bo (NK “Living”) label. During these years, the Triva series moved beyond knock-down furniture and expanded to include designs like Kerstin Hörlin-Holmquist Paradiset Sofa (ca. 1958) and Yngvar Sandström’s Tokyo Bench (ca. 1964). Other notable midcentury Nordiska Kompaniet designs include the Annette Dressing Table (1943) and Trienna Chair (1957) by prominent architect, interior and industrial designer Carl-Axel Acking. 

Aided by the consumer influence of the department store, which gave the space and context to present single products not just exclusively, but also within full room settings, Nordiska Kompaniet enjoyed decades of manufacturing success before declining profitability forced the closure of their Nyköping workshop in 1973 and turned their focus to trade. Today, the company is still renowned as a high-brow supplier of goods and services, operating from two outlets: the original NK on Hamngatan, and another in Gothenburg (est. 1971).