Eero was born in 1910 in Finland, the son of Eliel Saarinen, himself a world-famous architect. In 1922, Eliel won second prize in the Chicago Tribune Tower competition, came to America, received a commission to build an artists' colony in Michigan (which became the Cranbrook Academy of Art), and stayed. Initially trained as a sculptor, Eero eventually switched to architecture, studied at Yale, and joined his father, working with him and teaching at Cranbrook. This Arts and Crafts version of the Bauhaus was a fertile training ground for the young architect. (Jayne Merkel's excellent architectural monograph provides details of this period.) Two of the people at Cranbrook who became his lifelong friends were architects and furniture designers Charles Eames and Florence Schust. The latter would be instrumental in furthering Saarinen's career as a furniture designer (they are shown at right in a 1957 photo, with the base of Saarinen's celebrated Pedestal Chair).