What Charles And Ray Eames Might Have Done With Modern Materials

Matthew Strong recreates an Eames sofa using carbon fiber. What else might the legendary designers have done with today's materials?

The Eames fiberglass shell chair has been made in the same way for almost 60 years. A mold covered in glue is dipped into a machine, which constantly spins around, resulting in a skeleton of a million fiberglass threads. This skeleton is then coated in paint, and pressed between two 30,000-pound presses until it has a glossy, almost candy-like shell.

It's a beautiful manufacturing process to watch, but because of the way the Eames Molded Shell Chair is finished, you never actually see the design of the skeleton underneath. The Carbon Fiber Eames Sofa, from architect and designer Matthew Strong, is an attempt to reveal that gorgeous inner structure. Woven together with threads of threads of ultra-strong, reinforced polymer, the Sofa shows off the Eames skeleton by stripping away the skin.
Although the Eameses never designed a sofa in the style of theirfiberglass shell armchairs, they did design prototypes sometime in the 1950s, which are still on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Because of the amount of fiberglass needed to make the Eames Sofa sturdy enough to hold multiple sitters, Herman Miller ultimately decided not to manufacture the product. The finished sofa was just too heavy.
But if the Eames had access to modern materials, such as carbon fiber, the Eames Sofa may well have become a reality. Which is what makes Matthew Strong's sculptural carbon fiber skeleton of the Eames Sofa such a fascinating project in its own right: looking at it is like peering into an alternate timeline of Eames-era design.

Searching for an Eamesian Mood: MOC by Karine Simonot and Stéphanie Maigret

I'm loving these spaces by Karine Simonot and Stéphanie Maigret of MOC (Maison, Objets et Chantiers). Some bold colour accents, some fabulous Eames chairs and some amazing architecture for an eye-catching backdrop.

Eames Spotting: Boltz

This gentlemen looks very comfortable in his Eames 670 chair while he watches the tv that sits on a steel BOLTZ stand. Now we should note that there’s very little steel used in the Eames chair. The base and the back braces are solid aluminum.

Eames Spotting: Herman Miller

How "Powers Of 10" Inspired The iPad's Most Beautiful New App

Earth: A Primer is like a geology textbook for the Diamond Age: an iPad app in the style of Neil Ardley and David Macaulay's The Way Things Work that explains and simulates the ways in which lava, wind, temperature, and water shape our planet. It even has a built-in simulator that lets a reader play god, channelling millennia worth of unfathomable geological forces through their fingertips as they carve out canyons, grow volcanos, smash continents together, and more.
Designed by programmer Chaim Gingold, is so effortlessly beautiful that as I messed around with it, I thought it was bound to show up in an official Apple ad one day or another. That's how perfectly it realizes the promise of a truly interactive textbook. Yet Earth: A Primer did not start as a book at all. It started as a galaxy-spanning game—someone else'sgalaxy-spanning game.
The path to Earth: A Primer begins with Will Wright, a legendary game designer responsible for EA's classic SimCity games. Wright, hot off of his creations of the first Sims game, was looking for a new idea for a game in 2002. After watching Charles and Ray Eames's classic short film, Powers of 10, Wright had an epiphany: what if you modeled life in a video game the same way, simulating single-celled organisms in the primordial ooze and then expanding the scale, layer by layer, until you were modeling an entire galactic civilization?

see the demo at: https://vimeo.com/116179264

"Art and Architecture 1945-1954". Ten years, ten boxes, 118 issues, 6,156 pages!

The first part (1945-1954) of Taschen facsimile edition of John Entenza’sgroundbreaking magazine, which launched the Case Study House Program; in ten boxes, each containing one year’s worth of magazines

From the end of World War II until the mid-1960s, exciting things were happening in American architecture: emerging talents were focusing on innovative projects that integrated low-cost materials and modern design. This trend was most notably embodied in the famous Case Study House Program, which was championed by the era’s leading American journal, Arts & Architecture. Focusing not only on architecture but also design, art, music, politics, and social issues, A&A was an ambitious and groundbreaking publication, largely thanks to the inspiration of John Entenza, who ran the magazine for over two decades until David Travers became publisher in 1962. The era’s greatest architects were featured in A&A, including Neutra, Schindler, Saarinen, Ellwood, Lautner, Eames, and Koenig; and two of today’s most wildly successful architects, Frank Gehry and Richard Meier, had their debuts in its pages. A&A was instrumental in putting American architecture—and in particular California Modernism—on the map. Other key contributors to the magazine include photographers Julius Shulmanand Ezra Stoller, writers Esther McCoy and Peter Yates, and cover designersHerbert Matter and Alvin Lustig, among many luminaries of modernism.
This collection comes with ten boxes, each containing a complete year’s worth ofArts & Architecture magazines from 1945–1954. That’s 6,156 pages in 118 issues reproduced in their entirety—beginning with Entenza’s January 1945 announcement of the Case Study House Program. Also included is a supplement booklet with an original essay by former A&A publisher David Travers, available in English, German, French, and Spanish; plus a master index and tables of contents for the magazine from 1945-1967. Arts & Architecture 1945–1954 will be followed by a second set, 1955–1967, bringing together all the existing issues of the modern era. There is no delivery date yet of this second set.
This new Taschen publication, limited to 5,000 numbered copies, provides a comprehensive record of mid-century American architecture and brings the legendary Arts & Architecture back to life after forty years.

Eamesian mood: ‘Wilsey Road’ London Residence by Extrarchitecture

‘Wilsey Road’ London Residence was originally an Edwardian house with a poorly designed loft extension, rented out for many years. The existing house was shabby, with most of the original features already demolished during the course of it’s life. With this refurbishment extrArchitecture gave a new life to the tired terraced house in London, surprising it’s visitor when entering through the door of a conventional Edwardian facade.
The open plan at the ground floor has been visually divided in two sections by adding a toilet in a box, where three structural columns were going to support the house above. The bathroom was positioned toward the front of the house under the pitched roof, leaving room at the rear for a bedroom and a small studio with the nicest outlook.

Courtesy yellowtrace.com
see: www.yellowtrace.com.au/wilsey-road-london-residence-extrarchitecture/#gallery-2

Luca Barcellona, "Take Your Pleasure Seriously"

For Luca Barcellona, Italian graphic designer and calligrapher, letters are the building blocks of his creations. From Carolingian to tags, from the quill to the spray can, Barcellona takes the age-old craft of lettering to new heights with the inventiveness and talent of a contemporary virtuoso. His striking, expressive, and original letterforms and compositions open onto uncharted territory, laying the foundations of a new writing style.
Take Your Pleasure Seriously (a quote by Charles and Ray Eames) serves as a leitmotif for Barcellona who turned his passion into a way of life, first as a graffiti artist and then as a professional calligrapher. His production spans a broad spectrum from the reproduction of a world globe from 1569 to brand identities, book covers, ad campaigns, and performances.
This beautifully designed artist book features hundreds of drawings made over the last decade including commissioned work (Carhartt, Dolce & Gabbana, Nike, Red Bull, Universal, etc.), personal projects, performances, and many never-seen-before
work.
The book will fascinate and inspire anybody who works with letters or is interested in how they look.

In Turin this precious book is sold by Libreria NB Nota Bene, Via Bellezia 12.

Luca Barcellona, Giovanni De Faccio, and Nicola “Dee Mo” Peressoni, Take Your Pleasure Seriously, Lazy Dog, Milan.

Creativity runs in the Eames family

Many of Llisa Demetrios’ earliest memories consist of sitting in the living room of her grandparents home, showing off colorful childhood projects fashioned out of yarn, clay and wood. As Demetrios grew, the creative couple taught her about various art forms and the necessity of hard work, but also the willingness to have fun. These grandparents were none other than internationally renowned design experts, Charles and Ray Eames.
Three artistic generations of this family is being celebrated in the Petaluma Arts Center’s newest exhibit, “Work & Play: The Eames Approach.” The gallery will feature a mélange of photography, film, sculpture and design concepts tied together with the themes of curiosity and experimentation.

read all at: www.petaluma360.com/entertainment/3370487-181/creativity-runs-in-the-eames

Llisa Demetrios and her "Bouncing Ball" sculpture that is part of a display of three generations of art her family at the Petaluma Art Center on Monday January, 9, 2015. (SCOTT MANCHESTER/ARGUS-COURIER STAFF)

February 16, 2015: Eames Demetrios guest lectures at Modernism Week on the designs of Charles & Ray Eames

Event at Hilton Palm Springs, Horizon Ballroom, Palm Springs, CA.

Speaking of his Cranbrook years, Charles Eames said, “Those who know of Rembrandt early [in life] are cheated of the pleasure of discovery.” Though neither Charles nor Ray were blank slates when they arrived at Cranbrook, both saw a chance to understand more deeply. By the same token, they brought remarkable life experiences that made their learning and teaching there all the richer. Indeed, the Cranbrook philosophy and their approach to that philosophy could not have been better matched.

Charles and Ray were intensely visionary while still deeply pragmatic in their work, and both aspects were on full view during their time in Michigan. Of the legendary Eames/Saarinen Organic Chair, Charles said that in the end it was “more a statement of principle” than a fully-realized chair. But scarcely had they left Michigan, when fate (and furniture) brought them another deep Michigan connection, this time on the other side of the state, where they redeemed the promise of their early exploration through their work for Herman Miller, Inc., of Zeeland, Michigan.

A grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, Eames Demetrios is Director of the Eames Office and Chairman of the Eames Foundation. Wearing many hats including consultant, filmmaker, and author, he is best known in the design world for spearheading the successful rediscovery of the Charles and Ray Eames design heritage by new generations, as Director of the Eames Office.