A womb of one's own

Kim O'Malley

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Those comfy orange chairs in Paul Rudolph Hall really are super comfy—so much so that they were dubbed “Womb Chairs” when architect Eero Saarinen ’34BFA designed them in 1948. These chairs were installed in the atrium of the Haas Family Arts Library when Rudolph Hall—then known as the Art & Architecture Building—was renovated in 2008. School of Architecture dean Deborah Berke is a fan. “I have a vintage one in my library at home,” says Berke; “they’re wonderfully comfortable in dozens of different positions, and well suited to an indulgent afternoon of reading.”

“We’ll sometimes see students power napping in them during crunch times,” says Haas Library director Heather Gendron. “It’s nice to see the chairs used as they were intended.”

Grace Wynter ’20 (left center, at top) told us she chose her womb chair for writing a paper on witchcraft. It’s even better, she says, since the library installed white-noise machines.