AD Classics: Eames House Charles and Ray Eames

Table Of Content

• The Gherkin, London – The UK’s Famous Egg-Shaped Building
• Country With the Most Tallest Buildings – The Most Skyscrapers
• Types of Visits:
• AD Classics: Eames House / Charles and Ray Eames
• Principles of Art – Understanding the Principles of Design in Art
• Eames House – The Modern Stylings of Case Study House 8
• My Experience
• Hear Ray Accepting the 1979 Royal Gold Medal

The Eames lounge chair and ottoman was created by the 20th-century design duo Charles and Ray Eames and released by Herman Miller, now under MillerKnoll, in 1956. It's mass-produced, but it's not priced for the masses — a new chair and ottoman will run you $7,395, plus tax and shipping. Today, the Eames House is carefully maintained by the Eames foundation and was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

The Gherkin, London – The UK’s Famous Egg-Shaped Building

Being so close to the ocean, the steel columns have to be repainted constantly to deter rust and corrosion. Although right next to the ocean, being in LA, the site is very desert-like as well, which is not a positive characteristic for the site on which a building is to be conserved. This along with the use of rubber flooring that discolors over time and the wear and tear of the parquet flooring makes the house a very high-maintenance building. The studio building also boasts a mezzanine level, but one that is much shorter in length than that of the main building. The studio’s ground floor consists of a bathroom, a utility sink, a dark room for the processing of photographs, and also a large double-volume space to inspire and create within.

Country With the Most Tallest Buildings – The Most Skyscrapers

Restoring the Eames House and Silvertop in Los Angeles - New York Magazine

Restoring the Eames House and Silvertop in Los Angeles.

Posted: Mon, 10 Jun 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Also included on the second story are multiple hallways with aluminum closets, two bathrooms, and a wire-fixed skylight. The entrance door has a clearly marked gold-leaf panel above it, which makes it easily identifiable. A small courtyard splits the main house and the studio and was not part of the original plans, but luckily only required one extra beam.

Types of Visits:

They worked under the name of their own company, the Eames Office where they contributed greatly to architecture and furniture design. The most well-known furniture pieces that they have designed are the Eames Lounge Chair and the Eames Dining Chair. The Eames were believers in “learning by doing”, and they taught multiple notable designers. The Case Study House 8 was designed and built by the husband-and-wife duo, Charles, and Ray Eames in 1949, who moved into the house that same year. The house served as their home and creative studio for the remainder of their lives, which was a total of 40 years of occupying the house.

The Eameses purchased 1.4 acres from Arts & Architecture owner John Entenza in 1945, but the journey to the final construction was rife with modifications and resource constraints. Initial designs by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, which envisioned a glass and steel box cantilevering dramatically over the property, were shelved. In part, due to material shortages in the post-war era, Charles and Ray turned inward, observing and soaking in the nuances of the site. The eventual design had the house sitting quietly in the land, harmonizing with the natural surroundings rather than imposing on it. The Eames house sits both chronologically and structurally as a successful middle term between Breuer and Johnson. The two spaces (private and guest) are separated by a courtyard, as opposed to being completely structurally separated (as in the case of the opposition between Johnson’s glasshouse and guesthouse).

Principles of Art – Understanding the Principles of Design in Art

The program opened on the heels of World War II and encouraged an architecture that would express modern life in the postwar world, and Entenza was eager to give modernist architects the opportunity to define the postwar home. Given the accessibility of new materials and techniques locally produced in Los Angeles by the aerospace industry for war efforts, it was easy for the Eamses to adapt such new methods and materials creatively. The Eames House is regarded as the most successful out of the twenty-five Case Study houses that were built.

Eames House – The Modern Stylings of Case Study House 8

The new Eames House design featured a residence building and a studio building tucked into the landscape's slope, with an 8-foot (2.4 m) tall by 200 foot (60 m) long concrete retaining wall. The lower level of the residence features a living room with alcove, hall with closets and spiral staircase, kitchen, and utility space. The upper level holds two bedrooms and overlooks the double-height living room in mezzanine fashion.

The Eames chair is one of those rare luxury goods that checks all those boxes for novices and experts alike, in his view. He appreciates the craftsmanship and knows it's something he'll have for a long time. Black leather, wood base, toss it in a living room or a home office, and voila, a statement piece.

Hear Ray Accepting the 1979 Royal Gold Medal

The panels, steel columns, and even the gold-leaf panel marking the entry door were not afterthoughts but an integral part of the architectural dialogue. The Eames House reflects this in its intricate interplay of textures, colors, and spaces that come together to create a harmonious whole. The Eames Case Study House #8, usually known simply as Eames’ House, is usually presented as a kind of kaleidoscope of details. It remains one of the most exuberantly performative homes in the history of architecture, with its resident designers, Charles and Ray Eames, as the chief actors. They enacted the day-to-day as an ongoing celebration, documenting the daily rituals of work, play, and hospitality with photography and film. What this theatre of life conceals is that the Eames’ house was itself, structurally, a kind of theatre.

She's written in lifestyle and design publications such as MyDomaine, Atomic Ranch and American Farmhouse Style. There are glass pieces in various shades of translucency, colorful cemestos and stucco pieces, and even some aluminum! As part of the Case Study House program, the home was largely built with standard components so that it was accessible and able to recreated by the average American.

By the time the materials arrived three years later, much pre-construction time had been spent picnicking at and exploring the lot where the house would stand. After a period of intense collaboration between Charles and Ray, the scheme was radically changed to sit more quietly in the land and avoid impinging upon the pleasant meadow that fronted the house. Although Eero Saarinen did not have any contribution to the Eames House as built, he did co-design the Entenza House (Case Study House #9) with Charles Eames next door for John Entenza.

The house was built largely of standard components, such as the windows which measure a standard width of 3-feet 4-inches. The Eames House is open to the public five days a week for reservations, which include exterior self-guided visits, private interior tours, picnics, events, and more. "I think it's just reminiscent of a bygone era, and a lot of people are bought into that entrepreneurial hustle mindset. And having that type of chair is something of an indicator of success," he said. "Most everything you get nowadays is Wayfair or something like that, or Ikea. It's all throwaway garbage. And nobody puts much care into design. It's like everything is fast fashion, fast food, fast, fast furniture."

The Getty Conservation Institute and the Eames Foundation have just completed a comprehensive plan to preserve the house for the next century. Known as a Conservation Management Plan, it is a strategy for the ongoing care, management, conservation, display, and interpretation of the house and its contents. The first plan of the Eameses’ home, known as the Bridge House, was designed in 1945 by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. The design used pre-fabricated materials ordered from catalogues, a continuation of the idea of mass-production.

The use of natural materials on the interior bring the residence closer to nature, giving the appearance of the house resting softly on the earth. A row of eucalyptus trees was also planted at the front that provide shade and blend parts of the house with outdoors. In the early 1940s, John Entenza, the owner of Arts & Architecture magazine and Case Study Program founder, purchased 5 acres of land on a wooded bluff that was once part of Will Rogers' large estate. The structure was to be constructed entirely from "off-the-shelf" parts available from steel fabricator catalogs.

Help us share the Eameses’ joy and rigor with future visitors, so they may have a direct experience of Charles and Ray’s approach to life and work. Currently, it costs $10 to tour the exterior of the house and only peek through the windows to the interior views. A case study is seen as the in-depth research and documentation of a built project from the design process right through to the installation and habitation. The aim of case study houses is to continually learn from mistakes and improve on future builds. With the entire Eames House living room cleared out, it was the perfect opportunity to repair asbestos-covered cracked flooring, which needed urgent attention. The items in the Eames House living room were briefly transferred to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and displayed from 2011 to 2012 for an exhibition.

Examining the house as an interactive Archilogic 3D model holds, for this reason, some revelations even for those for whom the house looks as familiar as an old friend. The Eames Office acted as a founding partner of the Eames Foundation alongside Vitra and Herman Miller, the two furniture companies that have held a lasting relationship with Charles and Ray’s furniture since the 1940s. Additionally, the Eames Foundation’s partnership with the Getty Conservation Institute is helping secure the physicality of the house and its collections through special ongoing conservation projects.