TWA Flight Center in the context of Shell (structure)

Eero Saarinen (/ˈeɪroʊ ˈsɑːrɪnən, ˈɛəroʊ -/, Finnish: [ˈeːro ˈsɑːrinen]; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer. Saarinen's work includes the General Motors Technical Center; the Dulles International Airport Main Terminal; the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport; the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center; the Gateway Arch; and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. During his career, Saarinen was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and served on the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Born in Hvitträsk, Finland, he was the son of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. Saarinen grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where his father taught. Saarinen became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1940, a year after marrying the sculptor Lilian Swann, with whom he had two children. After divorcing Swann in 1954, Saarinen married Aline Bernstein Louchheim. In 1961, Saarinen died while undergoing an operation for a brain tumor.

A shell is a three-dimensional solid structural element whose thickness is very small compared to its other dimensions. It is characterized in structural terms by mid-plane stress which is both coplanar and normal to the surface. A shell can be derived from a plate in two steps: by initially forming the middle surface as a singly or doubly curved surface, then by applying loads which are coplanar to the plate's plane thus generating significant stresses.Materials range from concrete (a concrete shell) to fabric (as in fabric structures).

Thin-shell structures (also called plate and shell structures) are lightweight constructions using shell elements. These elements, typically curved, are assembled to make large structures. Typical applications include aircraft fuselages, boat hulls, and the roofs of large buildings.