Enjoy the Ant-Man titles !

Enjoy the "Ant-Man" movie titles by Sarofsky: they are an intentional homage to the iconic "Powers of Ten", the famous short film directed by Charles and Ray in 1977.

Christmas gift idea (3): "Charles & Ray Eames", by Maryse Quinton

In this book, the contemporary designers questioned in the insets all place them in their personal pantheon. Giulio Cappellini, for example, believes they are the greatest designers of all times. 
Maryse Quinton (with Eames Demetrios and Alexandra Forterre) reviews four decades of creation, enhancing certain key moments, such as the construction of their home on the heights of Pacific Palisades, and offers a complete panorama. It talks of their relations with big industry (Alcoa) or the intelligentsia (Billy Wilder) but lacks two must-have elements: a real chronology and an index.

Maryse Quinton, Eames Demetrios, Alexandra Forterre, "Charles & Ray Eames", Éditions de La Martinière, Paris, 2015.
Available at nb:notabene Torino, via Bellezia 12 - via Giolitti 26 a.

Off the grid: Charles and Ray Eames' Wire Chair, revisited

Fifty-one Charles and Ray Eames Wire Chairs reinterpreted by artists will be auctioned in Paris today (14 December) to raise money for La Source, a charitable association created by French artist Gérard Garouste to help children express themselves through art in four French centres.
The chairs were donated by Vitra and reinterpreted by leading artists, interior designers, fashion designers and architects, many of whom also participate in La Source workshops each year. Famous names on this year's list include Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec, Philippe Starck, Matali Crasset, Antoine + Manuel, Odile Decq, Christian Louboutin, India Mahdavi, and, of course, Garouste himself.
The designer one-offs come under the hammer of Simon de Pury, chairman of the Philips art auction house. Maître de Pury explains that the charity auction is exceptional in his experience, as artists surpass themselves to transform the object for auction into something unique.
'The Wire Chair's grid seems to have particularly inspired the artists, we're seeing a great deal of invention and a lot of humour,' he says.
5.5 designstudio reinterpreted the chair as a barbeque, Christian Louboutin added a backrest in the form of his signature red leather sole, while Philippe Starck added padlocks in a tribute to the Pont des Art bridge. Most poignantly, Sarah Lavoine and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac created a tribute to Paris following the recent tragic events.
The chairs will be exhibited in the Hôtel de l’Industrie in Paris until today; the auction begins at 8pm French time this evening.

Via wallpaper.com
Read more at http://www.wallpaper.com/design/charles-and-ray-eames-wire-chair-revisited#bCoGDGL04ZlLimqT.99

Christmas gift idea (2): "Mid-Century Modern Complete" by Dominic Bradbury

"Mid-Century Modern" offers a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the subject – furniture, lighting, glass, ceramics, textiles, product design, industrial design, graphics and posters, as well as architecture and interior design, use of innovative and affordable materials and forms of mass manufacture, and newly developed precepts of ‘good design’.
Nearly 100 major and influential creators of the mid-century period are highlighted from Scandinavia, Western Europe, America, Japan, Brazil and Australia. They include icons such as Saul Bass, Robin Day, Charles and Ray Eames, Marimekko, Isamu Noguchi, Dieter Rams, Lucie Rie and Paolo Venini, as well as architects Alvar Aalto, Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra and Oscar Niemeyer.
An additional illustrated dictionary features hundreds more key mid-century designers and manufacturers as well as important organizations, schools and movements.
The book showcases classic designs as well as little-seen rarities, and unusual objets d’art as well as mass-produced items and includes thirteen specially commissioned essays by renowned experts.

Dominic Bradbury, Mid-Century Modern Complete, Thames and Hudson, London, 2014.

Available at nb:notabene Torino, via Bellezia 12 - via Giolitti 26 a

Christmas gift idea (1): "Alexander Girard" by Todd Oldham & Kiera Coffee

Renowned designer Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee have created this massive monograph on seminal designer Alexander Girard as the ultimate tribute to this design icon.
This 672-page book covers virtually every aspect of Girard’s distinctive career. As one of the most prolific and versatile mid-20th century designers, Girard’s work spanned many disciplines, including textile design, graphic design, typography, illustration, furniture design, interior design, product design, exhibit design, and architecture. Exhaustively researched and lovingly assembled by designer Todd Oldham, this tome is the definitive must-have book on Girard’s oeuvre.
Girard’s repertoire includes an incredible list of projects, including his bold, colorful, and iconic textile designs for Herman Miller (1952-1975), his typographic designs for La Fonda del Sol restaurant (1960), his celebrated retail store Textiles and Objects (1961), his own Girard Foundation (1962) that houses his extensive, personal collection of folk art from around the world, and his complete branding and environmental design for Braniff International Airways (1965).
Girard’s work continues to inspire new generations of designers and admirers, and this beautiful book is the ultimate tribute to his legacy.


Todd Oldham, Kiera Coffee, "Alexander Girard", Ammo Books, Los Angeles (Cal.), 2011.
Available at nb:notabene Torino, via Bellezia 12 - via Giolitti 26 a

Charles and Ray Eames's Kids Toys: As Wonderful as You'd Expect

In a new article posted by Herman Miller, Alexandra Lange, Curbed's architecture critic, examines the Eameses legacy of design intended for children, including playful prefab structures and boxes meant for building. It's clear from the analysis, accompanying archival images, and cool interactive toy that the duo valued playful design, and a gift for inspiring that same appreciation in others.

A central tenant of the design philosophy of Ray and Charles Eames was an embrace of play as an end in itself, the idea that creativity should be unconstrained and unburdened. While the couple will always be remembered for their contributions to furniture, design and cinema, it was their approach to experimentation, and their interest in seemingly tangential topics such as clowns, that inspired their seemingly endless sense of wonder and a constant drive towards exploration and improvement. As champions of those beliefs, it only goes to follow that they'd also be some of the world's foremost toy designers.

Ph. courtesy Herman Miller Archive

TIME's memory: Bobby Fischer dragged one of the building’s Eames chairs to Iceland!

This week, TIME is moving to new headquarters—so here's a look back at the old…

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Bobby Fischer dragged one of the building’s Eames chairs to Iceland!

What happened was that the company commissioned Charles and Ray Eames to design the reception rooms for TIME in the new building, and their work included a Charles Eames chair. When editors moved into the space, the lore goes that they decided the chairs were so nice that they wanted to keep the chairs themselves rather than let random people sit in them. Some top staffers were notorious for hoarding them and moving them whenever they switched offices. But it wasn’t just the staff. Bobby Fischer somehow took a liking to the seat, deciding it was perfect for chess-playing. When he took on Boris Spassky in Iceland in 1972, it was while sitting on an Eames TIME-LIFE chair that he’d had brought over for the occasion.

Bobby Fischer of the U.S. right, and Boris Spassky of Russia, play their last game together in Reykjavik, Iceland, in this Aug. 31, 1972 
Courtesy: AP Photo/J. Walter Green

The villa of James Bond’s nemesis in Spectre remembers the iconic modernist home of Charles & Ray

This moroccan villa is the home of James Bond’s nemesis in Spectre. The glass, metal and concrete structure appears in the latest Bond film as tensions comes to a head and James Bond arrives at the desert lair of villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld​. 

The house as it appears in the listing – surrounded by lush greenery – is almost unrecognisable from how it looks in the film, thanks to the special effects that transplanted it to a starker, dustier desert location.

In fact, the home is only eight kilometres from the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, not a long, desolate train ride through the Sahara Desert, as the film would suggest.
The contemporary-style villa was built in 2006 and designed by Algerian-trained architect Imaad Rahmouni​.
The two-level house has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two reception areas. The expansive open-plan living area is flanked by a thin pond and is only three stepping stones away from the lawn.
The large glass windows with black framing – reminiscent of the iconic modernist home of Charles & Ray Eames – affords uninterrupted views of the lush garden, which is dotted with palm trees.
The centrepiece is the striking pool which runs perpendicular to the house.
Accompanying the main residence is a separate guest house with three more bedrooms and its own swimming pool.

Courtesy Domain.com

Cranbrook's Golden Age: How a Freewheeling School Changed American Design

Tuesday, November 17, 2015, by Patrick Sisson

Alumni visits don't get much more high profile than Ray Eames's brief return to Cranbrook Academy of Art in May 1980. Half of the dynamic design couple whose grabbag of inventive projects became synonymous with post-war Modernism, Ray, who had been widowed a little less than two years prior, was then living by herself in the trailblazing Case Study house she built with her late husband Charles. Known for its pioneering layout and polychromatic interior, the home, decorated with the vast quantity of objects, artwork, and collectables accrued by the couple over nearly four decades together, must have been a potent source of memories.

But Ray's trip to speak at the Michigan arts school where she met her husband in 1940 proved a similar catalyst for nostalgia. A Detroit Free Press article from that summer says she was "smiling continuously." During a discourse that covered all manner of design topics, she often "wandered into memories."

"It was an extraordinary time when we were here," Eames is quoted as saying. "There wasn't a degree involved, only people who were here to learn."

The legend of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and its role as a prewar petri dish for American modernism, revolves around the brief period of time from roughly 1937 to 1941. Ray, Charles, and a host of future architects and designers crossed in and out of each other's paths, studying and teaching at the wooded campus roughly 25 miles north of Detroit. But Cranbrook's singularity didn't just stem from its collection of talent. An experiment in education by founder George Booth, a wealthy industrialist, his wife Ellen, and Eliel Saarinen, an eminent Finnish architect who designed the campus and served as the first president, Cranbrook was a new institution, a modern arts colony that reflected the times. The philosophies that Ray and her classmates picked up there could be considered the DNA of modern design: cross-disciplinary thought, organic forms, and a fidelity to experimentation and research.

courtesy curbed.com

Read all at: http://curbed.com/archives/2015/11/17/cranbrook-academy-american-modern-design-charles-ray-eames-knoll-saarinen-bertoia.php

Point of view: "The Atlantic" on Charles and Ray

The Vision of Charles and Ray Eames: how two designers from the 20th century influenced and predicted the way people would live in the 21st.

by Sophie Gilbert

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In a 1972 short film titled “Design Q&A,” Charles Eames offered answers to a series of questions about design, a field in which he and his wife, Ray, had envisioned everything from medical splints and airport seating to low-cost housing and children’s toys. “What is your definition of design, Monsieur Eames?” asked the interviewer, Madame L’Amic. “One could describe design as a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose,” Charles replied. They continued:

MADAME L’AMIC: What are the boundaries of design?
CHARLES EAMES: What are the boundaries of problems?

This Eamesian understanding of design as a solution rather than a luxury—as something that’s about industry as much as art—encapsulates the unique philosophy and vast influence of Charles and Ray Eames, a husband-and-wife team whose lightness of touch and Californian joie de vivre infuses contemporary offices and homes. Would Ikea be the same without the Eameses? Would Apple? Their work is best remembered via the molded-plywood and leather lounge chair that bears the Eames name, but their vision of design as something that could get “the best to the greatest number of people for the least” lives on in less tangible ways. The Eameses, above all else, helped democratize the genre.
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But it’s impossible not to sense the Eamesian influence in low-cost, flat-packed furniture sold at Ikea, or Crate and Barrel, or Target. The way-it-should-be-ness of their chairs so infuses modern design that their own works have inspired countless contemporary imitators—something Charles himself might have appreciated. “To be realistic,” Charles Eames once said, “one must always admit the influence of those who have gone before.”
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Much of their impact is harder to trace: The designer Dieter Rams, whose work for Braun is unmistakably felt in the work of Apple’s chief designer, Jonathan Ive, has credited them as an influence, and certainly Apple’s synergy of form and function, lightness of spirit, and commitment to process borrows heavily from the Eamesian model. Their belief that everyday objects can both define and provide meaning makes them one of the most enduring creative forces of the 20th century. They predicted the future even if they couldn’t describe it. “What is the future of design?” Madame L’Amic asked Charles Eames at the end of their Q&A. His response: a montage of images featuring fruit, plants, and flowers, as if to point at how the encapsulation of function and beauty has really been all around us, all along.

courtesy: theatlantic.com

read all at: www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/charles-and-ray-eames-beyond-the-chair/415764/