Internally Yours

Is it me, or did the New Yorker just retroactively invent a new architectural movement? In his excellent overview of the crisis in the American auto business, Peter J. Boyer writes of Eero Saarinen’s GM Tech Center outside of Detroit, claiming it was “considered a triumph in the Internal Modern style” when it opened in 1956. It’s been a while since I’ve walked the halls of academia, but this seems like a new locution to me. (I’m guessing “International Style” and “Modern” were somehow mashed up in the editing.) I also found this sentence a bit strange: “The chief designer’s office is like something from the set of Mad Men….” Isn’t it the other way around, though? In any event, it’s nice to see Saarinen and the Tech Center get a little ink. It’s a wonderful project, and you can read a bit more about it in my introduction to Ezra Stoller’s book on the TWA Terminal.