Charles Eames

Charles Eames (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) was an American designer, architect and filmmaker who, together with his wife Ray, is responsible for many classic, iconic designs of the 20th century.

Biography

Charles Ormond Eames, Jr was born in Saint Louis, Missouri. By the time he was 14 years old, while attending high school, Charles worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture (and also first entertained the idea of one day becoming an architect).

Charles briefly studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis on an architectural scholarship. He proposed studying Frank Lloyd Wright to his professors, and when he would not cease his interest in modern architects, he was dismissed from the university. In the report describing why he was dismissed from the university, a professor wote the comment "His views were too modern." While at Washington University, he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, who he married in 1929.

After he left school and was married, Charles began his own architectural practice, with partners Charles Gray and later Walter Pauley.

One great influence on him was the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect, would become a partner and friend). At the elder Saarinen's invitation, he moved in 1938 with his first wife Catherine Woermann Eames 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.One of the requirements of the Department of Architecture and Design at the time Eames applied was for the student to have decided upon his project and gathered as much pertinent information in advance - Eames' interest was in the St. Louis waterfront. Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New York's Museum of Modern Art "Organic Design" competition. Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding, that Eames would further develop in many moulded plywood products, including, beside chairs and other furniture, splints and stretchers for the U.S. Navy during World War II.

In 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, moving with her to Los Angeles, California, where they would work and live for the rest of their lives. In the late 1940s, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine "Case Study" program, Ray and Charles designed and built the groundbreaking Eames House, Case Study House #8, as their home. Located upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and constructed entirely of pre-fabricated steel parts intended for industrial construction, it remains a milestone of modern architecture.

Designers

In the 1950s, the Eameses would continue their work in architecture and furniture design, often (like in the earlier moulded plywood work) pioneering innovative technologies, such as the fiberglass and plastic resin chairs and the wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller. Besides this work, Charles would soon channel his interest in photography into the production of short films. From their first one, the unfinished Traveling Boy (1950), to the extraordinary Powers of Ten (1977), their cinematic work was an outlet for ideas, a vehicle for experimentation and education.

The Eameses also conceived and designed a number of landmark exhibitions. The first of these, "Mathematica, a World of Numbers and Beyond" (1961), is still considered a model for scientific 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.

The office of Charles and Ray Eames, which functioned for more than four decades (1943-88) at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California, included in its staff, at one time of another, a number of remarkable designers, like Don Albinson and Deborah Sussman. Among the many important designs originating there are the molded-plywood DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and DCM (Dining Chair Metal with a plywood seat) (1945), Eames Lounge Chair (1956), the Aluminum Group furniture (1958) and as well as the Eames Chaise (1968), designed for Charles's friend, film director Billy Wilder, as well as molded plywood leg splints for the US Navy, the playful Do-Nothing Machine (1957), an early solar energy experiment, and a number of toys.

Short films produced by the couple often document their interests in collecting toys and cultural artifacts on their travels. The films also record the process of hanging their exhibits or producing classic furniture designs, to the purposefully mundane topic of filming soap suds moving over the pavement of a parking lot. Perhaps their most popular movie, "Powers of 10", 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. Charles was a prolific photographer as well with thousands of images of their furniture, exhibits and collections, and now a part of the Library of Congress.

Charles Eames died in 1978 while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Louis, and now has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Philosophy

The Eames philosophy was very much entrenched in process. Process to get to the final product often took years of trial and error.

At one time, Charles gave a series of lectures called the "Norton Lectures". At the lecture, the Eames viewpoint and philosophy is related through Charles' own telling of what he called the banana leaf parable. A banana leaf being the most basic dish with which to eat off of in southern India. He related the progression of design and its process where the banana leaf is transformed into something fantastically ornate. He explains the next step and ties it to the design process by finishing the parable with:

"But you can go beyond that and the guys that have not only means, but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding, go the next step and they eat off of a banana leaf. And I think that in these times when we fall back and regroup, that somehow or other, the banana leaf parable sort of got to get working there, because I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of, but it's that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf. And as we attack these problems – and I hope and I expect that the total amount of energy used in this world is going to go from high to medium to a little bit lower – the banana leaf idea might have a great part in it."

Works

Architecture

St. Louis Post-Dispatch model home (193?)
St. Mary's Church (Helena, Arkansas) (193?)
Meyer House (1938)
Bridge house (Eames - Saarinen) (1945)
Case study #8 (1945)
Eames House (1949)

Selected films

A Communications Primer (1953)
Toccata for Toy Trains (1957)
Tops
Powers of 10 (1977)
Fiberglass Chairs
SX-70
Eames Lounge Chair

Exhibition design

Glimpses of the USA (7 screens for the American exhibition in Moscow, Sokoolniki Park) (1959)
Mathematica (for IBM) (1961)
IBM Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair
Nehru: The man and his India (1965)

Exhibits and retrospectives

Library of Congress exhibit (1999)

Furniture

Eames-Saarinen Kleinhans chair (1939)
Eames-Saarinen organic chair (1941)
Children's chairs (1945)
LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) (1945)
Circular table wood (1945)
Eames Plywood Side Chair (1946)
La chaise (1948)
Eames RAR (Rocker Armchair Rod) Rocker (1948)
Eames Eiffel Plastic Side Chair (1950)
Eames Eiffel Plastic Armchair (1950)
Eames Desk and Storage Units (1950)
Eames Desk and Storage Units (1950)
Eames Sofa Compact (1954)
Eames lounge chair and ottoman (1956)
Eames Aluminum Management Chair (1958)
Eames Aluminum Side Chair (1958)
Eames Aluminum Ottoman (1958)
Eames Walnut Stool Shape A & B (1960)
Eames tandem sling seating (1962)
Two piece plastic chair (1971)

Other

Molded plywood splint (~1942) for the US military
Molded plywood nose cone and other parts for the CG-16 (flying flatcar) glider (1943)
Pilot seat (1946) Prototype in molded plywood for the military
Newton deck of cards
House of cards (1952)

Quotes

"No, Ray is not my brother."
"Innovate as a last resort."
"Design is the appropriate combination of materials in order to solve a problem."
"I don't remember being forced to accept compromises, but I've willingly accepted constraints."