The design office of Charles and Ray Eames functioned for more than four decades (1943–1988) in the former Bay Cities Garage at 901 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in
Venice, Los Angeles,
California. The Eameses worked approximately 13-hour days, six or seven days a week, and directed the work of a team of collaborators. Through the years, its staff included many notable designers:
Gregory Ain (who was Chief Engineer for the Eameses during World War II),
Don Albinson,
Harry Bertoia,
Annette Del Zoppo,
Peter Jon Pearce, and
Deborah Sussman. The Eameses believed in "learning by doing"; before introducing a new idea at the Eames Office, Charles and Ray extensively explored needs and constraints of the idea.
Early use of plywood The Eameses began exploration into bent plywood as early as 1941, seeing the potential of a lightweight and low-cost material. However, manufacturers lacked the capacity to bring their ideas to life. In 1942, the Eameses built a
plywood-curing oven, named Kazam!, in their apartment. From Kazam!, they produced their first bent-plywood seat shell. In late 1941, the Eameses began developing a leg splint for wounded soldiers during WWII. This was in response to medical officers in combat zones reporting the need for improved emergency transport splints. The splints needed to be lightweight, stackable, and tightly support the form of the human leg without cutting off circulation. Using a mold from Charles's leg, they set about applying their experiments in bent plywood to the use-case of splints. The Eameses created their splints from wood veneers, which they bonded together with a resin glue and shaped into compound curves using a process involving heat and pressure. The US Navy's funding for the splints allowed Charles and Ray to begin experimenting more heavily with furniture designs and mass production. In 1942 and 1943, the Eameses also experimented with large, bent-plywood sculptures as a way of testing the limits of the technology and experimenting with new forms. the Solar Do-Nothing Machine (1957), an early
solar energy experiment for the
Aluminum Corporation of America; and a number of toys. At the time of Charles' death they were working on what became their last production, the Eames Sofa, which went into production thanks to Ray's efforts in 1984.
Office furniture design 1956 The Eames lounge chair designed in 1956 for
Herman Miller quickly became a prototype for
ergonomic furniture. As with their earlier
molded plywood work, the Eames' pioneered technologies, such as using fiberglass as a materials for mass-produced furniture. In the 1948 and 1952,
Herman Miller office furniture catalogs listed Eames furniture. Herman Miller relocated the tooling and resources for the mass production of Eames designs to its headquarters in
Zeeland, Michigan in 1958. Herman Miller, along with their European counterpart
Vitra, remain the only licensed manufacturers of Eames furniture and products.
Fabric design In August 2005, Maharam fabrics reissued Eames designed fabrics; Sea Things (1947) pattern and Dot Pattern. Dot Pattern was conceived for The Museum of Modern Art's “Competition for Printed Fabrics” in 1947. The Eames fabrics were designed solely by Ray.
Films Charles and Ray channeled their separate interest in
photography and theatre into the production of 125
short films. From their first film, the unfinished
Traveling Boy (1950), to the most-recognized
Powers of Ten (re-released in 1977), to their last film in 1982, their cinematic work was an outlet for ideas, a vehicle for experimentation and education. The couple often produced short films to document their interests, such as collecting toys and cultural artifacts on their travels. The films also record the process of hanging their exhibits or producing classic furniture designs. One film,
Blacktop, filmed soap suds and water moving over the pavement of a parking lot, a normally mundane subject turned visually poetic.
Powers of Ten (narrated by physicist
Philip Morrison) gives a dramatic demonstration of
orders of magnitude by visually zooming away from the earth to the edge of the universe, and then microscopically zooming into the nucleus of a carbon atom. The "Powers of Ten shot" has been referenced by Hollywood as a praised filming technique. entry (
Case Study House #8 built in 1949)|thumb
Architecture Charles attended Washington University from 1936 to 1938 and was expelled from the architecture program due to his loyalty to the practices of Frank Lloyd Wright. He constructed two churches in Arkansas and three homes in St. Louis without an architecture license. He relocated to Michigan to attend the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Three years after arriving in Los Angeles, Charles and Ray were asked to participate in the Case Study House Program, a housing program sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine in the hopes of showcasing examples of economically-priced modern homes that used wartime and industrial materials. John Entenza, the owner and editor of
Arts & Architecture magazine, recognized the importance of Charles and Ray's thinking and design practices—alongside becoming a close friend of the couple. Charles and Eero Saarinen were hired to design Case Study House number 8, which would be the residence of Charles and Ray, and Case Study House number 9, which would house John Entenza, in 1945. The two homes (alongside other Case Study houses) would share a five-acre parcel of land in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood north of
Santa Monica, which overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Because of post-war material rationing, the materials ordered for the first draft of the Eames House (called “the Bridge House”) were backordered. Charles and Ray spent many days and nights on-site in the meadow picnicking, shooting arrows, and socializing with family, friends, and coworkers. They developed a love for the eucalyptus grove, the expanse of land, and the unobstructed view of the ocean. They decided to not build the Bridge House and instead reconfigured the materials to create two separate structures nestled into the property's hillside. Eero Saarinen had no part in this second draft of the Eames House; it was a collaboration between Charles and Ray. The materials were finally delivered and the house was erected from February through December 1949. The Eames' moved in on Christmas Eve and it became their only residence for the remainder of their lives. It remains a milestone of
modern architecture. The Eames Office designed a few more pieces of architecture, many of which were never built. The Herman Miller Showroom on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles was built in 1950 and the DePree House was constructed in Zeeland, Michigan for Max DePree, son of the founder of Herman Miller, and his growing family. Unbuilt projects include the Billy Wilder House, the prefabricated kit home known as the Kwikset House, and a national aquarium.
Exhibition design The Eameses also conceived and designed a number of exhibitions. The first of these,
Mathematica: A World of Numbers... and Beyond (1961), was sponsored by
IBM, and is the only Eames exhibition still in existence. The
Mathematica exhibition is still considered a model for
science popularization exhibitions. It was followed by
A Computer Perspective: Background to the Computer Age (1971) and
The World of Franklin and Jefferson (1975–1977), among others. ==List of works==