Charles Ormond Eames Jr, 1907-1978
Charles worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture. This was where he first entertained the idea of becoming an architect.
Charles briefly studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis on an architecture scholarship. After two years of study, he left the university. Many sources claim that he was dismissed for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his interest in modern architects. The university reportedly dropped him because of his "too modern" views. Other sources, less frequently cited, note that while a student, Charles Eames also was employed as an architect at the firm of Trueblood and Graf. The demands on his time from this employment and from his classes led to sleep-deprivation and diminished performance at the university.
Whilst in Washington he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they had a daughter, Lucia Jenkins.
In 1930, Charles began his own architectural practice in St. Louis with partner Charles Gray. They were later joined by a third partner, Walter Pauley. Eames was greatly influenced by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect, would become a partner and friend). Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New York's Museum of Modern Art "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition. Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding (originally developed by Alvar Aalto), that Eames would further develop in many moulded plywood products, including chairs and other furniture, splints and stretchers for the U.S. Navy during World War II.
In 1938 Charles moved with his wife Catherine and daughter Lucia to Michigan, to further study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design department and in 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser which is the beginning of a beautiful partnership.
Bernice Alexandra (Kaiser) Eames, 1912-1988
In 1933 she graduated from Bennett Women's College in Millbrook, New York, and moved to New York City, where she studied abstract expressionist painting with Hans Hofmann. She was a founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936 and displayed paintings in their first show a year later at Riverside Museum in Manhattan. One of her paintings is in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art.
In September 1940, she began studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She met Charles Eames while preparing drawings and models for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition and they were married the following year.
The start
During World War II, the U.S. Navy called upon Charles and Ray Eames to create a lightweight, inexpensive leg splint. The resulting design is a highly sculptural yet functional device that could be mass-produced and, being modular, conveniently and inexpensively transported. Access to military technology and manufacturing facilities allowed the Eameses to perfect their technique for molding plywood, which they had been working on for several years. In its three-dimensional, biomorphic form, the leg splint suggests the Eames' subsequent, highly influential plywood furniture designs.
They applied these techniques to their furniture design and began turning out icons. Their approach to chair design was to start with the idea of a shell as the seat, shaped to fit the body so that upholstery became unnecessary. In the late 1940s they came out with a series of reinforced molded fiberglass shells that could be attached to a number of different bases like the "Eiffel Tower," "Cat's Cradle," and one that would make it a rocking chair.
The 'eiffel tower' base
Like many modernists, the Eames believed that affordable, mass-produced, well-designed furniture and objects for the home were tools that could bring about an environment ripe for social change and betterment. Over several decades in which they were almost constantly working, the Eames took on the roles of decorators, designers, entertainers, educators and artists. Their work, and expansive work philosophy, helped define an American style, summed up by Ray as, "what works is better than what looks good. The 'looks good' can change, but what works, works." These are the reasons why I've chosen to research Charles and Ray Eames, they're timeless, functional and above all simply beautiful. Their philosophy towards design is one I share and believe in.
The Eames House is an exceptionally important work of postwar Modern residential design and construction, and it embodies many of the distinguishing characteristics and ideals of postwar Modernism in the United States. It is regarded as one of the most significant experiments in American domestic architecture. It is also significant for its association with the Case Study House Program. The Case Study House Program was a product of the many concerns regarding housing and architecture voiced in the post-World War II period. It was to be a concentrated program of commissioning houses by a select group of architects, thereby providing an opportunity for innovative architects to imagine, design, and construct the ideal home for a postwar American family. The Eames House, or Case Study House #8, is the most recognizable and most widely published of all the residences completed with the Case Study House Program. The Eames House is the property most closely associated with nationally significant designers Charles and Ray Eames. This property served as their private residence and working studio throughout their long and prolific careers as furniture designers, filmmakers, photographers, exhibition designers, and graphic artists. This property is also one of the few architectural works attributed to Charles and Ray Eames.
The video illustrates the architecture of the house but it is a slightly strange video created by the two
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