The reopening of Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center is notable for its interior as a reconstruction of 1962. No longer functioning as a terminal, Saarinen’s building serves as a retrofitted lobby to the newly constructed TWA Hotel. Staff are dressed in vintage uniforms, Elvis Presley and Ray Charles are on repeat, the passage of time is punctuated by the turn and click of an old Solari split-flap display board. Within the restored terminal and hotel addition, fashion and product design seem dated, while furniture and finishes look oddly familiar, simultaneously historical and of the moment. Resembling a recent spread from Dwell or a contemporary co-working space, the reuse and addition raise questions surrounding the contemporary interior as perpetually revived or long enduring. While the terminal underwent careful preservation–reaffirming the building’s status in the pantheon of twentieth century architecture–its historic interior and hotel addition appear as a static collection of objects, outfits, and sounds.
The Flight Center and Hotel highlight the tension between preservation, reenactment, and reuse. By what measure can preservation be evaluated when the original’s interior and exterior were granted landmark status just thirty-two years following completion? When the Flight Center opened in 1962, its function as a terminal quickly became obsolete, victim to the same driving innovation that brought the structure into being. TWA’s fleet of compact prop planes–one has been retrofitted as a cocktail bar behind the hotel lobby–were outpaced and outgrown by Boeing’s propulsion jet and wide-body cabin. Nonetheless, the Flight Center maintained prominence as an architectural icon and a symbol of its time, the “Grand Central of the jet age,” according to Robert A.M. Stern.
Yet, the adaptive reuse and hotel addition are predominantly experienced by their interiority, as the new exterior yields to the preserved shell of the Flight Center and conforms to the regulatory requirements of the Port Authority. The famous red carpet and round tile of the original extend into the addition, staging a bouquet of Tulip Tables large and small, surrounded by the Eames’ molded plastic chairs. Each of the 512 guest rooms features a rotary phone. If a guest wants to shop, a Herman Miller furniture and Phaidon book store feature mid-century classics. Such a model of reuse resembles a paradigm of attraction relying on representation of landmarks of a different era–including the reenactment of Gettysburg, The Venetian Hotel, or Medieval Times. In each case, history is commercially reproduced as a spatialized representation.
Driven by an economic model of thematic hospitality, the TWA Hotel’s success will undoubtedly be measured by quantification of popular approval, that is, sales and profitability. Wagering on a 200% occupancy through renting guest rooms twice a day during its 31-year lease with the Port Authority, the gamble assumes mid-century modernism will fashionably endure well into the next mid-century.