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