We were recently given the rare opportunity to visit Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at JFK, completed in 1962 and closed to airline traffic since 2001. Twenty-two of us jumped …

We were recently given the rare opportunity to visit Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at JFK, completed in 1962 and closed to airline traffic since 2001. Twenty-two of us jumped at the chance to experience that bygone era of white gloved travelers and sensual curves, memorialized in Ezra Stoller's iconic black and white photographs, and more recently as the film set for "Catch Me if You Can." A designated historic landmark, the building sits empty but gently maintained, open only on rare occasions such as openhousenewyork (OHNY), where for 3 hours the adoring public swarms its sculpted stairways. The tour, graciously hosted by Jim Steven, manager of JFK's Physical Plant and Redevelopment, included a history of the building's use, from innovative travel hub, to total disrepair, to temporary art gallery, to its partial restoration by our colleagues at Beyer Blinder Belle, all the way to negotiations for its adaptive reuse as a 150 room hotel. The terminal's future is, as of yet, TBD.

A week after our visit, we shared our photographs of the building with Avva Tor, the project's original structural engineer, who joined us in a roundtable discussion at our office. In return, he revealed some of the structural secrets underlying the curving forms, and how engineers bridged the gap between the architect's lofty design aspirations and the earthly demands of physics.

With nostalgia and admiration, we time travelers share with you a few impressions of Saarinen's building – sculptural forms, beauty in disrepair, inspiration, and delight.