A Prefab House That Dazzles Still
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
NY Times Published: June 14, 2009
It took just one-and-a-half days for eight workers to build the frame from 11› tons of steel. The walls were made from prefabricated panels, and the windows were of a type usually used in factories. The staircase was ordered from a marine supplies catalog. The cost? Just $1 per square foot.
That was back in 1949, and the bill didn’t include the labor of the owners, who’d designed the house, or their employees. Even so, $1 was remarkably cheap, especially when compared with the $11.50 it then cost to build a square foot — that’s roughly a tenth of a square meter — of a typical American home. It seems even cheaper if you consider that the end result was occupied by its owner-designers, Charles and Ray Eames, for nearly 40 years. The Eameses went on to become America’s most famous industrial designers, and their new home was to be one of the most influential — and beloved — houses of the 20th century.
The Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California, is to celebrate its 60th birthday next weekend with a picnic on the grounds, once a meadow owned by the Western movie star Will Rogers. The ingenuity of the prefabricated structure dazzled architects and designers at the time, and still does today. The Eameses also created an exceptionally beautiful place to live and work, where the tumbleweed they found on their honeymoon drive from Chicago to Los Angeles hangs beside a Robert Motherwell painting, and the shadows of the surrounding eucalyptus trees dance across the factory windows.
Preserved by the Eames Foundation as a National Historic Landmark, the Eames House is still beguiling. I have yet to meet anyone who has been there and hasn’t fallen in love with it.
The simplest explanation is that the house was the Eameses’ most personal project, and the purest expression of their design sensibility. “Nowhere is their enthusiasm, curiosity and love for design better represented,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design and architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The couple met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where Charles was a teacher, and Ray a student. They married the following year, and settled in Los Angeles. From a makeshift studio in their apartment, they produced their first commercial success, a plywood leg splint for the U.S. Army, using materials that Charles had smuggled home from his day job building movie sets for MGM. They went on to design furniture that, as The Washington Post once put it, changed the way “the 20th century sat down.”
That’s no mean feat, but there was more to the Eameses. So far they have been best known for their furniture, but other aspects of their work are compelling, too. If you asked a scientist to cite a favorite example of the Eameses’ work, the answer might well be one of the short films in which they sought to demystify science and math, not a chair. Films like “Powers of Ten” — which takes the viewer on a journey from a human hand through the universe and back to earth again, ending with a carbon atom — were once praised for popularizing science and are now hailed as inspirations for the newly developed visual language known as Visualization.
Their zest for science complemented the Eameses’ passion for technology, which is reflected in the house’s innovative structure. Yet they also imbued their work with sensuality. The gentle curves and vibrant colors give their designs a warmth that feels very contemporary.
The same applies to their interests. Some, like their fascination with folklore, appeared eccentric at the time but seem less so now, as does the eclecticism of a couple as intrigued by physics and prefabrication as by Mexican craftsmanship. All of this is visible in the house, which is filled with thoughtful arrangements of the pebbles, buttons, pencils, toys, masks, kites and other knickknacks they collected over the years, as well as furniture and artworks made by them and their friends.
Equally prescient was the Eameses’ love of nature. When they started work on the house in the mid-1940s as part of the Case Study House Program to build model modern homes in California, they envisaged it as two separate buildings: a house with ocean views across the meadow and a studio set into the hillside. The longer they spent at the site, the more they loved it. Abandoning the original design, the couple devised a plan to preserve the area’s natural beauty by excavating a lot for both buildings between the trees and hill.
They were even early recyclers, and rarely threw anything away. One of their cars, a Ford, lasted them 18 years, and in the four decades they lived in their house, they replaced only one appliance, a refrigerator.
The Eameses’ way of working was influential, too. “Their practice of operating in multiple arenas — architecture, design, film and exhibitions — has become the template for today’s avant-garde designers, who are intentionally blurring the boundaries between the disciplines,” observed Joseph Rosa, chair of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Similarly Ray blazed a trail as one of the few prominent women designers of the day, although her contribution was often underestimated. A British design organization once presented a medal to Charles and a rose to her, but he always insisted on crediting her equally. When they appeared on NBC’s “Today” show in 1956, Ray was welcomed on set with: “This is Mrs. Eames and she is going to tell us how she helps Charles design his chairs.” He cringed, while she smiled gamely. (See it for yourself on YouTube.)
“Their house has become a beacon for the American way of poetic pragmatism,” said Ms. Antonelli. “Chez Eames, art is not intimidating, great design really is for everybody, and high taste means being able to enjoy the occasional tchotchke in a modernist masterpiece.” That’s why we love it.
via south willard
6/16/09
Everlasting Eames
A Prefab House That Dazzles Still
By ALICE RAWSTHORN
NY Times Published: June 14, 2009
It took just one-and-a-half days for eight workers to build the frame from 11› tons of steel. The walls were made from prefabricated panels, and the windows were of a type usually used in factories. The staircase was ordered from a marine supplies catalog. The cost? Just $1 per square foot.
That was back in 1949, and the bill didn’t include the labor of the owners, who’d designed the house, or their employees. Even so, $1 was remarkably cheap, especially when compared with the $11.50 it then cost to build a square foot — that’s roughly a tenth of a square meter — of a typical American home. It seems even cheaper if you consider that the end result was occupied by its owner-designers, Charles and Ray Eames, for nearly 40 years. The Eameses went on to become America’s most famous industrial designers, and their new home was to be one of the most influential — and beloved — houses of the 20th century.
The Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California, is to celebrate its 60th birthday next weekend with a picnic on the grounds, once a meadow owned by the Western movie star Will Rogers. The ingenuity of the prefabricated structure dazzled architects and designers at the time, and still does today. The Eameses also created an exceptionally beautiful place to live and work, where the tumbleweed they found on their honeymoon drive from Chicago to Los Angeles hangs beside a Robert Motherwell painting, and the shadows of the surrounding eucalyptus trees dance across the factory windows.
Preserved by the Eames Foundation as a National Historic Landmark, the Eames House is still beguiling. I have yet to meet anyone who has been there and hasn’t fallen in love with it.
The simplest explanation is that the house was the Eameses’ most personal project, and the purest expression of their design sensibility. “Nowhere is their enthusiasm, curiosity and love for design better represented,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design and architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The couple met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where Charles was a teacher, and Ray a student. They married the following year, and settled in Los Angeles. From a makeshift studio in their apartment, they produced their first commercial success, a plywood leg splint for the U.S. Army, using materials that Charles had smuggled home from his day job building movie sets for MGM. They went on to design furniture that, as The Washington Post once put it, changed the way “the 20th century sat down.”
That’s no mean feat, but there was more to the Eameses. So far they have been best known for their furniture, but other aspects of their work are compelling, too. If you asked a scientist to cite a favorite example of the Eameses’ work, the answer might well be one of the short films in which they sought to demystify science and math, not a chair. Films like “Powers of Ten” — which takes the viewer on a journey from a human hand through the universe and back to earth again, ending with a carbon atom — were once praised for popularizing science and are now hailed as inspirations for the newly developed visual language known as Visualization.
Their zest for science complemented the Eameses’ passion for technology, which is reflected in the house’s innovative structure. Yet they also imbued their work with sensuality. The gentle curves and vibrant colors give their designs a warmth that feels very contemporary.
The same applies to their interests. Some, like their fascination with folklore, appeared eccentric at the time but seem less so now, as does the eclecticism of a couple as intrigued by physics and prefabrication as by Mexican craftsmanship. All of this is visible in the house, which is filled with thoughtful arrangements of the pebbles, buttons, pencils, toys, masks, kites and other knickknacks they collected over the years, as well as furniture and artworks made by them and their friends.
Equally prescient was the Eameses’ love of nature. When they started work on the house in the mid-1940s as part of the Case Study House Program to build model modern homes in California, they envisaged it as two separate buildings: a house with ocean views across the meadow and a studio set into the hillside. The longer they spent at the site, the more they loved it. Abandoning the original design, the couple devised a plan to preserve the area’s natural beauty by excavating a lot for both buildings between the trees and hill.
They were even early recyclers, and rarely threw anything away. One of their cars, a Ford, lasted them 18 years, and in the four decades they lived in their house, they replaced only one appliance, a refrigerator.
The Eameses’ way of working was influential, too. “Their practice of operating in multiple arenas — architecture, design, film and exhibitions — has become the template for today’s avant-garde designers, who are intentionally blurring the boundaries between the disciplines,” observed Joseph Rosa, chair of architecture and design at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Similarly Ray blazed a trail as one of the few prominent women designers of the day, although her contribution was often underestimated. A British design organization once presented a medal to Charles and a rose to her, but he always insisted on crediting her equally. When they appeared on NBC’s “Today” show in 1956, Ray was welcomed on set with: “This is Mrs. Eames and she is going to tell us how she helps Charles design his chairs.” He cringed, while she smiled gamely. (See it for yourself on YouTube.)
“Their house has become a beacon for the American way of poetic pragmatism,” said Ms. Antonelli. “Chez Eames, art is not intimidating, great design really is for everybody, and high taste means being able to enjoy the occasional tchotchke in a modernist masterpiece.” That’s why we love it.
via south willard
