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Fans of Detroit's architectural history are in for a treat this month as PBS-TV airs the documentary "Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future," as part of its acclaimed American Masters series.

Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) died tragically young of a brain tumor, but in the dozen years before his death he designed an astonishing array of iconic projects, including the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., and the swooping bird-like TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York.

Like his fellow mid-century modernists Minoru Yamasaki and Edward Durell Stone, Saarinen saw his work derided by the high priests of glass-box modernism as too showy, too emotional, as mere advertisements for corporate clients. But today's viewers are more likely to respond to the beauty and precision of the places Saarinen painstakingly created at his studio in Bloomfield Hills.

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The film features Saarinen's son, Eric Saarinen, a filmmaker who shot the movie for director Peter Rosen. The younger Saarinen's relationship with his father's legacy was a complicated one because Eero abandoned his family to marry his second wife, who proved more supportive of his work.

"As it ended, I really got no closure with him," Eric Saarinen told me in a phone conversation. "He kind of booted us out of the house when I was 12 and my sister was 10 and my mother was still in love with him. ... Basically, I hated my father, and I didn't want to have anything to do with him and avoided him and his work."

But after local architect Robert Ziegelman persuaded the late philanthropist A. Alfred Taubman to help finance the film, Eric signed on as guide and cinematographer and came to a new appreciation of his father's genius.

Ziegelman himself worked for the architect for three years around 1960 and found him a warm, engaging mentor, almost the father figure Eric lacked after Eero abandoned the family. Today, looking back on the architecture works, Ziegelman Ziegleman said they stand as outstanding examples of architectural art.

"I was astounded 50 years later how well they held up,' he said. "The designs are current, there's nothing about it that looks clichéed or hackneyed. And I think it was a lesson in what good design can be, just classical stuff."

Eero Saarinen came to America with his famous father, Eliel, from their native Finland. Eliel won the job of designing the campus of the Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills. Eero Saarinen designed some of the furniture at Cranbook but struggled under his father's fame until he came into his own with the Gateway Arch and the GM Tech Center projects.

There followed a string of high-profile projects that drew inspiration from nature's organic forms and embodied the forward thrust of post-war American life. Projects, including the Dulles Airport and TWA Terminal projects, captured the spirit of the jet age. The bright enameled panels and "floating" staircases at the GM Tech Center caught the vibrancy of an automotive industry racing toward the future.

Each one differed from the next, a result perhaps of Eliel's advice to Eero "not to copy anybody, including himself, never do the same thing twice," Eric said. "Never repeat yourself. If you are, then you're falling into a style. He taught him not to fall into a style."

The work proved nothing if not bold. "Our architecture is too humble," Eero once said. "It should be prouder, more aggressive, much richer and larger than we see today."

The unique designs did not come easily. Eero was famed in the architectural world for creating dozens of models of a single project to test how each iteration would look and work. His father, Eliel, had been more instinctive in his approach. Some used to quip that when father and son worked together the firm made money under Eliel and lost money under Eero.

Filming his father's work allowed Eric Saarinen to reach the closure denied him in childhood. "I began to realize just how good it was," Eric told me. "He was very driven, obviously, and nothing was going to stop him."

The result was a brilliant body of work that is brilliantly captured capture in the film. If you like Detroit architecture, don't miss it.

The film "Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future," will premiere be premiering nationwide at 8 p.m. Tuesday, December 27 at 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) as part of the American Masters series. It will be available on DVD on Jan.uary 3, 2017 from PBS Distribution.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.