an Eames anthology 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd ii 1100//1177//1144 1100::4433 AAMM This page intentionally left blank aann EEaammeess aanntthhoollooggyy aarrttiicclleess,, fifi llmm ssccrriippttss,, iinntteerrvviieewwss,, lleetttteerrss,, n nootteess,, s sppeeeecchheess bbyy CChhaarrlleess aanndd R Raayy E Eaammeses eeddiitteedd bbyy DDaanniieell OOssttrrooffff YYaallee UUnniivveerrssiittyy PPrreessss NNeeww HHaavveenn aanndd LLoonnddoonn 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd iiiiii 1111//1188//1144 22::1155 PPMM All texts and images, unless otherwise indicated, are Copyright © 2015 Eames Office, LLC. www.eamesoffice.com Introduction Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Ostroff. Foreword Copyright © 2015 by Eames Demetrios. All copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. David Travers maintains the archives for Arts & Architecture magazine (www.artsandarchitecture.com). All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. yalebooks.com/art Designed by Mark Thomson Assisted by Rob Payne Set in Arnhem and Fakt Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937866 isbn: 978-0-300-20345-5 (cloth) isbn: 978-0-300-21283-9 (e-book) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Contents Foreword | Eames Demetrios ix Acknowledgments | Daniel Ostroff xi Introduction | Daniel Ostroff xiii Part One 1941–1949 5 “Design Today” 6 “Organic Design” 8 Covers for California Arts & Architecture, 1942 9 Covers for California Arts & Architecture, 1943 10 “City Hall” 13 “Line and Color” 14 “A New Emergency Transport Splint of Plyformed Wood” 16 Covers for Arts & Architecture, 1944 18 Mass-Produced Housing 20 “No man is an illand” 22 “Case Study Houses 8 and 9” (1945) 24 Evans Molded Plywood Products 25 Covers for Arts & Architecture, 1947 26 “Mies van der Rohe” 27 “Esthetic Qualities in Architecture” 29 “We Live in One of the Newest Houses in California” 31 “Case Study Houses 8 and 9” (1948) 32 usc Lecture on Design 35 Advice for Students 37 Richard Neutra Apartments: Correspondence 38 “Designer Charles Eames Tests Prize-Winning Furniture in His Own Home” 39 “Case Study House for 1949” 57 Case Study Houses: Truscon Steel Products Part Two 1950–1959 60 “Case Study House 9” (1950) 68 Case Study Houses: Correspondence 73 Molded Plastic Chairs 75 Eames Storage Units 76 Designs for Kites 78 “Design Today”: Arboretum Speech 92 Japanese Tea House: Correspondence 94 “The Relation of Artist to Industry” 97 “Design, Designer, Industry” 100 Packaging for Soap: Correspondence 101 Upholstered Wire Chairs: Correspondence v 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd vv 1100//1177//1144 1100::4433 AAMM 104 aia 1952 speech 111 “Japanese Architecture and the West” 112 Royalties for Furniture Designers: Correspondence 115 Chair Design Process 118 mgm’s Executive Suite: Correspondence 120 Architecture 1 and 2, University of California, Berkeley 129 Washington University School of Architecture: Correspondence 130 How the Chairs Are Made: Correspondence 132 Upholstery for Furniture: Correspondence 133 Buying a New Ford: Correspondence 136 “A Communications Primer”: Correspondence 138 Visit to Germany: Exchange Program of the German Government, 1954/55 140 Compact Sofa 142 Lounge Chair and Ottoman 146 Omnibus 150 Toy Orthopter: Correspondence 151 “Toccata for Toy Trains”: Correspondence and Narration 153 Fine Art and Function: Correspondence 155 Staffi ng the Eames Offi ce: Correspondence 156 Art Education in Public Schools 157 “The Making of a Craft sman” 160 Stephens Trusonic Speakers 162 “St. Louis Train Station 1957” 166 Furnishing a Home 167 Aluminum Group 176 “The India Report” 188 “Architecture in Miniature” 189 The Solar Toy 192 Glimpses of the U.S.A.: Correspondence 200 Industrial Arts Education: Correspondence 203 Royal Institute of British Architects 1959 Annual Discourse Part Three 1960–1969 206 “A Prediction: Less Self-Expression for the Designer” 208 Architects and Science: Letter to Reyner Banham from Charles Eames 210 Making Good Designs Better 212 “The Design of Mathematics” (Some Notes About Doing a Mathematics Exhibition) 214 What Must a Drumstick Do?: Correspondence 216 Design Education: Correspondence 217 “Architecture and Science”: ica Speech 218 “A Visit with Charles Eames” 224 Eames Contract Storage 226 U.S. State Department 228 “Chairs, Fairs, and Films” 230 Films on Architecture: Correspondence 232 “Evolution of a Design”: Eames Tandem Seating 241 Industry Film Producers Association Speech 244 “Design: Its Freedoms and Its Restraints” 247 Handwritten Notes on Design 248 Graphex Speech: The 1964–65 New York World’s Fair vi 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd vvii 1100//1177//1144 1100::4433 AAMM 259 A Twenty-Five-Year Appraisal 263 Immaculate Heart 264 “Excellence” 266 Gio Ponti 267 “Art and Science” Speech 268 100 Words on Symptoms of Creativity 269 “The Eames Design”: Public Broadcast Laboratory 272 “The Eames Design”: Correspondence 274 “Eames”: An Interview 276 “Sitting Back with Charles Eames”: Eames Chaise 280 National Aquarium: Correspondence 282 “What Is Design?”: An Exhibition at the Louvre 286 Puerto Rico Advisory Council on Natural Resources: Correspondence 288 “Poetry of Ideas: The Films of Charles Eames” 298 mit Report Part Four 1970–1979 304 Eames to Fehlbaum: Correspondence 305 Eero Saarinen’s Trick 306 “Banana Leaf” Parable 307 “Goods” 309 “General Motors Revisited” 311 “Renaissance Man” 313 “Q & A: Charles Eames” 318 “Eames on Eames” 322 “Disciplines of the Circus” 329 “The Language of Vision: The Nuts and Bolts” 332 Design Process at Herman Miller 339 An Eames Celebration: The Several Worlds of Charles and Ray Eames 340 “Innovator in Earth Shoes” 342 Arts, Education, and the Americas 343 Library of Congress: Correspondence 344 Eero Saarinen 347 “Education as a Found Object” 359 “A Conversation with Charles Eames” 366 St. Louis Oral History Project: Interview with Charles Eames 383 Notes on “Powers of Ten” 385 U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange Part Five 1980–1986 388 “Warehouse Full of Ideas” 389 Letter to Ronald Reagan 390 Note to Rolf Fehlbaum 392 From Business as Unusual Index 394 vii 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd vviiii 1100//1177//1144 1100::4433 AAMM This book is dedicated to Lucia Eames, 1930–2014, designer and sculptor, only child of Charles Eames and only stepdaughter of Ray Eames; and to her children: Byron Atwood, Lucia Atwood, Eames Demetrios, Llisa Demetrios, and Carla Hartman, who have operational responsibility for the Eames Offi ce. And to my father, Nathan Ostroff (Yale B.A. ’32, Yale LL.B. ’35), 1910–1983, international trade expert and United States Commerce Department attorney who worked with and greatly admired Charles and Ray Eames. He fi rst encountered them in connection with his work at the American Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, where the Eames fi lm Glimpses of the U.S.A. was presented. In 1964, he was Deputy United States Commissioner of the New York World’s Fair, where the Eames ibm Pavilion was such a great success. Because of my father’s position at the fair, my mother and I were given vip passes to all of the exhibitions, and we went to most of them. The only one I remember, and I remember it vividly, is the Eames People Wall. Daniel Ostroff Los Angeles viii 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd vviiiiii 1100//1177//1144 1100::4433 AAMM eames demetrios Foreword the mission of the Eames Offi ce today is to authentic chair that will be made tomorrow. communicate, preserve, and extend the work of I have always believed that you could literally Charles and Ray Eames. Hearing that, I am con- see the ideas in their work, and as you read these fi dent most people think fi rst of furniture, other pages you may fi nd Charles giving voice to the folks perhaps of the fi lms or the Eames House— forces that have compelled you from the start of all quite tangible projects. Meanwhile, I fi nd myself your design awareness. drawn to the ideas the Eameses championed: the Like their chairs, these words are a product guest/host relationship, constraints, or Charles’s of Charles and Ray’s collaboration—with all the beautiful comment, “Aft er the age of information intangibles that implies. comes the age of choices.” Charles Eames was born in 1907; thirty-four These ideas were as much a product of the Eames years later, in 1941, Charles and Ray arrived in Offi ce as any of the compelling objects, images, Los Angeles and began their work together; thirty- and fi lms that they created. And, although ideas seven years later, in 1978, Charles Eames died. Ray are generally reckoned as abstract, at the Eames followed in 1988. Thirty-seven years later, we have Offi ce they became very real. In this book you will this book; their working partnership has now been see that the iterative process that honed and fi ne- gone as long as it was together. This is the perfect tuned their chairs was used with their ideas. moment to look into the heart of their designs. Much has been hiding in plain sight. A visitor A month aft er Charles died, their dear friend to the Eames House notices immediately how I. Bernard Cohen wrote to Ray, “[Charles] was a comfortable in nature this emphatically manmade superb exemplar of what in the 17th century was structure feels. Even if one does not know that called an ‘intelligencer’—a far more apt word for Charles and Ray redesigned the house to preserve him than any of those words related to the cold the meadow, the respect for the landscape is utter ly expression ‘communicate.’ To be able to command present in the sensitive posture of the structure the universal respect of the scientifi c and engineer- and the incorporeal but vividly present indoor- ing community as Charles did, and even educate outdoor rhythms of its use. In other words, you that community in matters of taste—that really can see the idea of the house. was the sign seal of his genius and the greatness You can see this gift too in the way the fi lm of his personality!” Powers of Ten is as much about the power of con- What you are about to enjoy is the real reason straints as it is about science—and how the Eames that design matters, not the fl ash, not the tendency Aluminum Chair not only expresses but is way-it- to confuse it with style, but observations like this: should-be-ness. And perhaps all this suggests that “At all times, love and discipline have made for a design is less tangible than we think. The Eames beautiful environment and a good life.” Indeed, lcw chair is not one specifi c chair—hundreds of what makes these ideas truly essential is that we thousands of originals have been made. It is actu- can all use them in our lives as insights and inspi- ally the idea of that chair, particularly the idea that rations, signposts and cautions. the chair Charles and Ray were designing is the Prepare to be intelligenced by masters. foreword · ix 11440055119999__iinntt__CCSS66..iinndddd iixx 1100//1177//1144 1100::4433 AAMM