Creativity is the business and culture of California. Motion pictures, high technology, aerospace, wine, fashion, industrial design… these leading areas of enterprise within California depend upon creativity. And so, it’s not surprising that California’s most famous figures were first recognized for their creativity… Walt Disney… Steve Jobs… Howard Hughes… Robert Mondavi… Levi Strauss… Charles and Ray Eames.

Charles and Ray Eames? Though you may not recognize them, countless monuments to their achievements are found in schools, homes, airports and office buildings across America; they are the many stacks of multi-colored molded plastic chairs, luxurious lounge chairs, tandem airport sling seats and polished aluminum office chairs designed by this creatively prolific Southern California couple.

While the Eameses are remembered principally for the many chairs they designed, they also made groundbreaking contributions in architecture, industrial design, manufacturing and the photographic arts. Scores of their most-influential creations can be seen, sat upon, learned about and purchased at the “Eames Office� a gallery and store in Santa Monica. For appreciators of fine design, the Eames Office is more than a furniture store. Though nearly all of the most important Eames chairs and sofas (including several rare examples) are displayed and sold there, the store is more fundamentally a tribute to the remarkable lives of two American originals.

Ray and Charles Eames met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where Charles was experimenting with molded plywood, as head of the industrial design department, and Ray was a design student. The next year, they married and moved to California where they believed, that in anonymity, they would have time to explore how to mass produce molded plywood into compound curves. Those experiments were put to practical use in World War II when the Eameses produced 150,000 molded plywood leg splints for the U.S. Navy, as well as stretchers and experimental aircraft parts. Each was as much an artistic statement as it was functional.Â

Their marriage of form and function continued following the War when the Eameses applied war-born technologies and materials to peaceful uses. Among the first was a form-fitting, minimalist, molded plywood chair designated unpretentiously as the LCW chair, for “Lounge Chair Wood.â€? Influential architectural critic Esther McCoy called the LCW “the chair of the centuryâ€? while Time magazine dubbed it the “design of the century.â€? Despite now being more than 60 years old, this slung-back, form-fitting assembly of curved plywood is still produced in the U.S. by Herman Miller, Inc. and in Europe by Vitra International.Â

Innovative use of materials was an Eames hallmark. The early LCW chair evolved into their 1956 masterpiece, the Eames lounge chair and ottoman, a comfortable combination of curves, cushions and a variety of molded woods, including rosewood, cherry and walnut. This year, commemorating the lounge chair’s 50th anniversary, museum exhibits will appear across America, a 200-page coffee table book will be published, and a special numbered edition of the chair, made of black Edelman leather and sustain-ably harvested Santos Palisander rosewood, will be issued. This commemorative edition is being offered as a gift for joining the Eames Foundation at a level of $6,500 and will help sustain the creative legacy of the Eameses and preserve their home, also known as “Case Study House #8.�

The name of this home is as direct as its design. In January, 1945, Arts & Architecture magazine called for the design of eight prototypical houses to be built as practical demonstrations of ways to respond to then-anticipated postwar housing demands. Each home was to fit a particular living situation or “case.� The Eameses proposed a residence, according to the Eames Foundation, that was “for a married couple who were basically apartment dwellers working in design and graphic arts, and who wanted a home that would make no demands for itself, but would instead serve as a background for, as Charles would say, ‘life in work’ with nature as a ‘shock absorber’.� The home would incorporate modernist ideals and utilize off-the-shelf materials originally created for the war effort. They were the home’s intended and only residents.

Five Case Study houses, including the Eames house, were constructed on a bluff in Pacific Palisades, a coastal neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles. All of them have been maintained though none are open regularly for public tours and the Eames house is the only one of them that appears as it did when inhabited. Case Study House #8 is located at the terminus of Corona Del Mar off Chautauqua Blvd. and can be viewed from its exterior by appointment with The Eames Foundation, 1-310-459-9663. Many architects and designers consider visiting it to be a required pilgrimage to one of the most important modernist residences of the postwar period.

What makes the Eames home so important is its simplicity, use of space, minimalist design elegance and environmental concern for the site. The house and separate office and studio are two, simple, steel-beam boxes embellished only with geometric orange, blue, white and clear glass panels that remind many of the work of the Dutch modernist artist, Piet Mondrian. Eames Demetrios, grandson of Charles and Ray who continues the Eameses creative tradition as author, artist and head of the Eames Office, says his grandmother, Ray, was annoyed by that suggestion, responding that the pattern had nothing to do with Mondrian’s work but was the natural result of being made from steel beams and metal and glass panels.

“Design, for them, was an iterative process,â€? said Mr. Demetrios. The use of pre-fabricated materials led to the geometric form which resulted in the home’s design. The colored panels were a logical evolution, adding soul to its simple shape. For the Eameses, design was not the destination, but the journey. “They made very few drawings, preferring to develop models or full-scale iterations of their designs. They would begin by trying to understand the material and every aspect of its production.â€?Â

Prior to the Eameses, modernist furniture designers – such as Marcel Breuer – made chairs individually, whereas the Eameses mastered mass production, allowing their designs to proliferate across the U.S. However, despite their being mass produced, Eames chairs were never pedestrian. Instead, they are displayed inside the Smithsonian Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art among America’s finest creations.

Mr. Demetrios credits Charles and Ray Eames’ attention to how people would use their creations for the tenure of them. “As designers, they appreciated human concerns. The design wasn’t as important, as its use in answering society’s needs,� explained Mr. Demetrios. Anyone who has sat comfortably in an Eames plastic chair, through an interminably endless ceremony, understands that bottom line. Despite the many advances in ergonomic design, the Eames plastic side chair, plastic armchair and plastic rocker remain among the most comfortable chairs ever made.

The Eameses’ concern for serving society also resulted in a remarkable approach to doing business. Mr. Demetrios wrote in his biography, An Eames Primer (Universe Publishing), that “one of the most powerful forces in the Eameses’ work… is the guest/host relationship.� That is, the responsibility of a host to consider the needs of his guest before his own. “The Guest/Host relationship exists in every culture,� said Mr. Demetrios, “A nomad sees it as his obligation and responsibility to welcome others into his tent. Charles felt that it was also part of how one designed an exhibition or a chair or a building.�

The Eameses lived this philosophy not only in their design, but in the gracious and unanticipated manner in which they welcomed all clients and visitors to the Eames Office, a converted garage at 901 West Washington Boulevard in Venice, Calif. (now Abbott Kinney Blvd.). Job applicants were treated like honored guests; entertaining presentations were always at the ready for the unexpected visitor. Inside this converted garage was the design equivalent of Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works. A montage of colorful elements used in past or ongoing design projects hung from its walls: circus posters, photographs and objects d’art. “Collage culture meets California’s garage culture,� Mr. Demetrios said in describing the Eameses’ eclectic interiors where familiar objects from the past gained residence, until used anew.

New use for 901 (shorthand to describe the location of the original Eames Office) will begin this year with the development of a hotel on the site (see The Ambrose, p. ). Décor within the hotel will recall the 1950s and ‘60s when the Eames Office conceived groundbreaking exhibits and films on mathematics, form and communications. Considering its Southern California location, it was natural that films would be made at 901. The Eameses produced over 125 short films in 28 years. All of them, in one way or another were essays about design.Â

“Blacktop,� made in 1952 was their first completed film. It was conceived when Charles noticed soap bubbles on a nearby school yard; he and Ray made a thing of cinematic beauty from the swirling suds. Director Paul Schrader, paraphrasing Jorge Luis Borges, characterized the Eames films as “a cinema of ideas.� Each film, according to Charles Eames, was either a logical extension of some immediate problem they were working on, or something they had wanted to do for a long time and couldn’t put off any longer.

In “The Powers of Ten,� Mr. Demetrios wrote, the Eameses encapsulated their life’s work, process and philosophy by demonstrating observations of scale. This nine-minute film begins looking down on a couple picnicking on a Chicago lawn, the camera then moves away at a constant rate of acceleration, in that every 10 seconds the camera moves 10 times farther away, yet the camera always remains centered on the picnicker’s spot. At ten seconds, the camera is 10 meters away from the picnickers, at 30 seconds it is a kilometer away (10+3 meters), and at 140 seconds it is 10+14 meters distance, encompassing the entire solar system, before continuing beyond the Milky Way galaxy. The film then reverses its journey, traveling inward toward the picnic scene, but upon arrival at the picnickers it moves closer toward the man’s hand, past cells, into DNA and finally fading to black at 10-16, one-tenth the size of a proton.

What inspired this exploration of scale? Mr. Demetrios believes Ray and Charles inquisitiveness about it was influenced by their mentor Eliel Saarinen who had often spoken of looking at things from their next-smallest and next-largest frame of reference. Many of Charles Eames early photographs demonstrated this interest, but finally, The Powers of Ten was a demonstration of the Eameses stepping back to gain perspective. The film began as a technical test and ended up as a film that is still shown in schools to stimulate thought about the relationships of space and time.

Such monuments may seem ephemeral, though the Eameses’ vast body of design work survives for new generations to live, experience and enjoy. For these two great California designers, life was a series of experiments, observations, realizations and triumphs. In the end, the Eames legacy is a name that stands alone among California’s creative captains.

Linking Eames
Eames Foundation – www.eamesfoundation.org
The Eames Office – www.eamesoffice.com
Herman Miller – www.hermanmiller.com

When I told my twenty-something son that his mother and I would be traveling to Southern California to research a story on mid-century modern architecture, he snickered, “How can they call that modern?  It’s so old-fashioned.”

“How else would you describe linear homes of glass, stone and steel?” I asked.  “Whatever,” he replied, dismissing the topic.  And so, I drove south questioning whether the dream homes of my youth, promoted then as the houses of tomorrow, were yesterday’s story.

On arrival in Palm Springs, we checked into the Movie Colony Hotel, conceived by architectural pioneer Albert Frey in 1935.  We, in our 50s, were the oldest guests there.  Sweet revenge!  Our son’s contemporaries had discovered what he hadn’t and we soon would, that mid-century modern architecture is as hot today as when it was introduced, with a new generation of retro-focused X-gens embracing its austere beauty.  Modern?  You bet it is, and Palm Springs and Los Angeles are where the best examples can be found.

To the uninitiated, modern architecture seems to be one concept, but in fact it is layered with different styles: prairie, art deco, international, art moderne, roadside vernacular, mid-century, googie, modern builder, contemporary builder, shed, and contemporary folk.  All of these styles can be seen in California.

The zenith of restrained modernism and Zen-like livability occurred from the 1940s to 1960s; that’s when many of the most beautiful examples of modernist architecture were built.  Some were the result of limited budgets.  Others accommodated vacation life and were occupied only a few days each year, or were designed to provide exotic escapes for people from northern cities or represented their owners’ accomplishments.  Still, others were conceived as quickly erected housing for burgeoning post World War II families.  Then, too, architects found that modernist forms complemented desert and environmental aesthetics better than other styles or fulfilled new concepts about merging indoor and outdoor living.  Whatever the inspiration, the results were elegantly minimalist structures whose light forms particularly complemented California’s mild climate and plein-air life.

For commercial and public buildings modernist designs caught the eye, invited entry, entertained or represented government hopes to be perceived as forward thinking.  However, they were so evocative of their age that when designed on the cheap or not rigorously maintained in tasteful style, they appeared forever stuck in the past.

In any other part of the world, modernist architecture is the odd exception or is dismissed as being naively anachronistic, but in Southern California – particularly in Palm Springs and Los Angeles – its examples are maintained, restored, preserved and their importance elevated to cultural landmark status.  Support for modernism, there, is evidenced in countless ways.

Each February, Palm Springs holds a Modernism Show with a week of tours, lectures, symposia, parties and an exhibition hall filled with vendors.  As evidence of the town’s pride in its modernist heritage, the highlight of this year’s show was the addition of architectural photographer Julius Shulman to Palm Springs’ Walk of Stars along Palm Canyon Boulevard, an honor usually reserved for luminaries the likes of Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren and Ronald Reagan.

Appropriately, Palm Canyon Boulevard is the place to begin exploring mid-century modern architecture.  We began by walking the boulevard and were surprised by the many modernist furniture, design and curio shops along it.  One not accustomed to the style might mistake the pink and orange bead curtains, lime plastic furniture, and astro clocks displayed in store windows as representative of what the style is about.  Far from it.  All this is exaggerated eye candy for tourists and “Martini modernist” wannabees.  If you want to really understand the style, peruse Adèle Cygelman’s coffee table book, Palm Springs Modern or Alan Hess and Andrew Danish’s Palm Springs Weekend or Pierluigi Serraino & Julius Shulman’s Modernism Rediscovered.  Or better yet, join Robert Imber on an architectural tour of Palm Springs.

We met Mr. Imber’s “Palm Springs Modern Tour” at Starbuck’s on Palm Canyon Boulevard.  In our group were Rich and Liz, advertising executives from Chicago, and Pam a marketing executive from Northern California who lives in a mid-century modern home and carried her weathered copy of Palm Springs Modern.

“This is where it all began,” Mr. Imber intoned, while gesturing toward the remnants of Lloyd Wright’s (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) 1923 Oasis Hotel, now housing nondescript shops.  The Oasis was the country’s and, needless to say, Palm Springs’ first modernist resort.  Wright utilized the then-new, slip-form technique of concrete construction to create horizontal shadow lines upon the International modern structure, and then topped it all with an art deco-like crest of ornamental concrete block on the hotel’s tower, “four to six years before art deco architecture appeared elsewhere,” described Mr. Imber.

Later added to the Oasis, where its front office had existed, was a classic E. Stewart Williams’ Internationalist style office building, whose rectilinear simplicity has, over the years, been diminished by uncharacteristic “improvements.”  Still, Mr. Imber emphasized, Williams’ genius is apparent in: the building’s highly crafted aluminum and teak door pulls, how shadows play across corrugated metal siding and the symmetry of the building’s boxed facade.

Mr. Imber identified an important example of Spanish revival architecture across the boulevard, a precursor to today’s theater/shopping complexes, comparing it to the subtler beauty of John Porter Clark’s 1941 Wellwood Murray Library to its left… an elegantly restrained example of California mission revival architecture void of ornamentation, evidently influenced by Clark’s affection for modernism.  And so, introduced to the style, we were off in the van to explore mid-century modern architecture as it evolved in Palm Springs.

You need not be a student of architecture to enjoy this tour.  Anyone with an interest in design, history or celebrity will find it fascinating.  Mr. Imber’s van passes Palm Springs’ most significant modern architecture, stopping briefly (though tour goers never leave the van to take pictures or enter the homes).  Along the way, he provides an entertaining stream of anecdotes about how the style came to be established in Palm Springs, why certain styles were built, how the category evolved and who some of its more celebrated occupants were.  As we passed through Palm Springs’ tennis club district, Mr. Imber directed our attention to architect Albert Frey’s compact hillside home, describing Frey’s revolutionary use of materials, “creating his own vernacular of concrete block and corrugated metal.”

Modernist architects were often exploring new technologies and materials, almost as if the materials themselves demanded application.  In a way, these artist/builders were conceiving new ways of living from new materials.  Or, as in Richard Neutra’s case, applying new materials to new ways of living.  Neutra’s Miller House constructed in 1937 for an eccentric physical therapist was one of the early modernist homes in the Coachella Valley and, recently restored, remains as one of its best examples, with glass exterior walls and using thin steel support posts.  Everything about the home was minimal except its understated beauty.

Nearly 70 years later, images of the home’s original interiors (shown to us by Mr. Imber) seem as fresh and new as if the home had just been completed.  We ached to explore its compact spaces as we slowly passed the Miller House though were off to visit another of Neutra’s masterpieces, the 1946 Kauffman house.  Built for the same architecturally enlightened family that commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, Neutra’s Kauffman house with its aluminum, sandstone and glass exterior and luminescent Douglas fir interiors has been likened to a cubist machine rising from a “boulder-strewn desert plain.”

Remarkably, modern architecture – mechanical and industrial to the extreme and the physical opposite of nature in form – seems a better aesthetic complement to nature than all but a few truly organic styles (i.e., Pueblo Revival).  At the Palm Springs Tennis Club, Imber said Paul R. Williams and A. Quincy Jones were faced with the dilemma of how to squeeze a restaurant onto a rocky perch overlooking a swimming pool.  They did so by forming it to the hillside with glass walls seemingly rising out of a rocky slope.  This use of glass to eliminate the difference between being indoors or out was carried to the extreme by local architect William Cody, dubbed the “master of thin” who employed impossibly thin support columns and rooflines.  Cody’s glass walls would disappear.  Uncased, un-curtained windows became invisible walls, looking out upon golf courses and the ruddy Santa Rosa Mountains.  Modern architecture in the desert could do this because of Palm Springs’ unusually clement atmosphere (late fall through spring).

As you drive through Palm Springs’ various neighborhoods, despite the openness of these homes, their privacy impresses.  Houses rarely look outward toward the street, but inward, embracing a central, secluded courtyard containing a swimming pool, patio and endless parties.  “They built their homes for relaxation and cocktail parties.  When the owners of these homes came to Palm Springs for a weekend away or for the winter, they were in resort mode,” said Mr. Imber who numbered many of the hosts among Hollywood’s glitterati.

The Palm Springs Modern tour is, however, no Hollywood homes tour.  Mr. Imber’s greatest enthusiasm was not for its celebrity homes like Villa Nance – an ostentatious confection owned by Nancy Sinatra that is the architectural equivalent of a Chrysler Cordoba – or others occupied by Elvis Presley, Howard Hughes, Peter Lawford, Jack Benny or Frank Sinatra.  He seemed only to point them out to satisfy the curiosity of his passengers, as when we passed near Bob Hope’s monstrous turtle shell-like home sitting atop a ridge overlooking the Valley.  Imber mentioned that when Hope saw the model of the home he cracked, “Well, at least when they come down from Mars, they’ll know where to go.” Instead, Mr. Imber was energized by the ordinary places that have become extraordinary landmarks, like George and Bob Alexander’s development of tract homes at Twin Palms, so named because every new home included two palm trees. “Notice what’s common about all of them,” he encouraged, “Garage, breezeway, windows, wall (sigh) garage, breezeway, windows, and wall.  No matter what roof was put on them or which direction they were turned on their lots, the layout was almost always the same… garage, breezeway, windows, wall.”

Like the “Case Study Houses” of the late ‘40s, (see Eames p. XXX), many of Palm Springs’ most interesting homes were conceived to revolutionize home construction.  Seven all-steel houses designed by Donald Wexler and constructed by the Alexanders were planned as models for a development of thirty-plus all-steel homes (a plan later foiled by escalating steel prices).  Each could be erected in four to six hours on a concrete slab, the minimalist, modernist homes with flat roofs and interior floor plans that could – with some effort – be changed, sold in the early ‘60s for from $13,000 to $17,000, depending on interior detail and were offered in three roof styles including a stationary accordion roof that folded over the living room.  Today, they have been tastefully returned to their 1960s character.

Because these homes are privately owned, they aren’t open for tours except rarely during festivals.  One of the few exceptions is Los Angeles’ Schindler House an early modernist masterpiece that is open to the public Wednesdays through Sundays.  A protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright and contemporary of Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler designed the house for himself in 1921 to demonstrate ways of living that he espoused.  MAK Center Director Kimberli Meyer said Schindler “really took the idea of combining indoor and outdoor into one space.  Rooms flow inside, outside and extend into the garden to the point that the boundary between inside and out is forgotten.

“Frank Lloyd Wright started this idea, but Schindler took it much further with outdoor rooms and courtyards that were integral to the house,” Ms. Meyer explained.  Outdoor living rooms and outdoor fireplaces would have been impossible in Austria or Chicago from where Schindler came, but Southern California’s mild climate was the perfect place for Schindler and his wife, Pauline, to live their dream of indoor-outdoor living and openness to nature a philosophy shared by their friend and housemate, Richard Neutra.

Occasionally, the MAK Center is granted permission to escort tours through modernist homes, though Ms. Meyer cautions, “It’s difficult to get on one of these tours without a reservation.”  Limousine tours of Los Angeles architecture are an easier matter.  They’re offered daily by Architecture Tours L.A. or join one of the LA Conservancy’s many architectural tours or lecture programs.

For do-it-yourself tours, head to the Silver Lake district to see L.A.’s greatest concentration of mid-century modern homes.  They’re identified in guides available at the MAK Center or buy the Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles by David Gebhardt and Robert Winter.  A must stop for architecture-philes is Hennessey + Ingalls, California’s premiere architecture bookstore in Santa Monica.

Of course, the best way to experience mid-century modern architecture is from the inside.  There are few more idyllic experiences than to stay in a mid-century modern hotel room open to the balmy climes of the desert, to be lost in a good book while lounging around the flickering, warming flames of an outdoor gas fireplace, or to enjoy an orangey, tart-sweet, Sake-based “Dean Martini” at the Movie Colony Hotel’s wine bar with all those retro thirty-somethings.

So, maybe, I ought to set my son straight and tell him what I found in Southern California… that buildings conceived 60 years ago can still truly be modern.  Nah, let’s keep this to ourselves.

Linking Mid-Century Modern
Architecture Tours LA – www.architecturetoursla.com
Green Fairway Estates – www.desertmodernism.com/greenfairway.html
Hennessey & Ingalls – www.hennesseyingalls.com
John Lautner Foundation – www.johnlautner.org
Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee – www.modcom.org
Los Angeles Conservancy Tours – www.laconservancy.org/tours
Movie Colony Hotel – www.moviecolonyhotel.com
Palm Springs Modern Tours – psmoderntours@aol.com
Palm Springs Modern Committee – www.psmodcom.com
Palm Springs Modernism Week – www.palmspringsmodernism.com
Palm Springs Preservation Foundation – www.pspF.net
Palm Springs Visitors Bureau – www.palm-springs.org
Richard Neutra – www.neutra.org
Schindler House – www.makcenter.org
Swiss Miss – www.jetsetmodern.com/issue5/swissmiss.htm
University of Southern California Downtown Walking Tour – www.usc.edu/dept/geography/losangeles/lawalk/

Ed. Note: The following article was written for the Fall, 2006 edition of California magazine, an excerpt of which can be seen on ezinearticles.com

Albert Frey had longed to apply the teachings of his friend, the great modernist designer LeCorbusier, when he was assigned to design the San Jacinto Hotel in 1935.  At the time, however, the predominant and accepted architectural style in Palm Springs was Spanish colonial revival, and yet Mr. Frey’s resulting interpretation of that style had the bones of a modernist’s structure.  Seventy years later, the hotel has finally become what Mr. Frey (pronounced f-ray) intended… a pure example of Desert Modernism.