Architecture is lifted from its traditional earthen ties to a condition being between earth and sky. Saarinen most brilliantly achieved these aims at Washington's Dulles Airport, and in St. Louis, Missouri with the Jefferson Memorial Arch. The Arch symbolizes an approach to a light future. The recent history of western society could be seen as a development towards lightness. With the mass production of cars, bicycles, and aircraft, space becomes lighter and more open, since we can more easily move through it.
People become closer together and are exposed to different cultural concepts.
Architecture has been struggling towards lightness since the beginning of this century. New building technologies went hand in hand with new social concepts. New materials like steel, glass, and concrete, and new construction methods like frame and skin construction, allowed architects like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen and others to create light and open buildings, which are still admired today and offer parallels to a vision of a light and open society. A Greek temple or gothic cathedral is very beautiful, but I believe that our modern society offers enough beauty to create a modern architecture, self- confidently referring to the context we live in today. If you look at a modern sailboat or aircraft, you see an object of extreme beauty, undeniably shaped by current technology and engineering.