Eames Good Design Challenge: New Life for a Classic Chair

KEM Studio, a design studio in Kansas City, Missouri, specializes in architecture and industrial design, has been named the winner of this year’s "Eames Good Design Challenge". 
Sponsored by Herman Miller and the John A. Marshall Company, the contest challenged approximately a dozen architecture and design firms, to “upholster” an Eames molded plastic chair in a way that combined both comfort and style.
For KEM Studio’s winning submission, Jonathon Kemnitzer, co-founder and principal of the firm, and his team took a white Eames chair, which they then drilled holes into and wove in a crisscross pattern using 30 feet of white felt that they purchased online.
To ensure their success, the team used several “throwaway” chairs that were Eames lookalikes and drilled holes into the plastic in various patterns and sizes before settling on their winning design.
“We wanted to take a traditional technique—weaving—and apply it in a modern way,” he says. “Since we’re an industrial-design firm, we approach things differently. [Our final design] is something that’s functional and beautiful at the same time.”

Courtesy: interiordesign.net

Read all at: www.interiordesign.net/articles/12069-kem-studio-wins-eames-good-design-challenge/

Eameses inspire Artist from Latin America Today

An important collaboration between South London Gallery and New York’s Guggenheim Museum brings a major survey of modern and contemporary art from Latin America to South London, which also happens to be home to one of the largest Latin American communities in Europe. The 40-plus artists included in Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today span from veteran figures producing radical work in the 1970s to some of the key artists making work today.
The works run the whole multi-media gamut: spanning drawing, sculpture, mixed media, painting, performance and video.
For example, ideas surrounding what it means to be “Tropical” prevail, as does a vibrant re-interpretation of the strategies of high 20th century Modernism and Conceptualism.
There’s a strong whiff of this in Gabriel Sierra’s re-purposing of Charles and Ray Eames’s iconic "Hang-It-All" wall-mounted coat rack. By bedecking this design classic with fresh grapes, apples and limes, Sierra undermines its pure, geometric aesthetic as well as its original function.

Read all at: www.telegraph.co.uk

Ph. credits: Andy Stagg / Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and South London Gallery

The Vitra Design Museums opened "Schaudepot"

The Vitra Design Museum has just opened a new building, "Schaudepot", opposite Zaha Hadid’s Vitra Fire Station on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. 

The ground-floor gallery showcases the first permanent display chosen from the museum’s vast furniture collection, including rarely seen works by Charles and Ray Eames, along with recent acquisitions like Dutch designer Joris Laarman’s 3D-printed aluminum Gradient Chair and Mali designer Cheick Diallo’s Ségou Rocker.
In the basement, hundreds more furnishings and accessories are visible through glass walls, including sculptures and prototypes from the Eames estate, and classic lamps by Alvar Aalto, among others.
“You get a glimpse of what there is,” said Mateo Kries, the museum’s director. “You see that it goes on and on and on.”

See: http://www.design-museum.de/en/collection/the-schaudepot.html

Happy 75th wedding anniversary to Charles and Ray

This is the Charles Eames Marriage Proposal to Ray:

Dear Miss Kaiser,

I am 34 (almost) years old, singel (again) and broke. 

I love you very much and would like to marry you very very soon.* 

I cannot promise to support us very well. — but if given the chance I’ll shure in hell try –

*soon means very soon.

What is the size of this finger??

as soon as I get to that hospital I will write “neams” well little ones.
love xxxxxxxxxx
Charlie

Amazon celebrates Charles Eames birthday (June 17) with pinboard of knockoffs

Charles Eames would have been 109 today. He was born on June 17, 1907, and died on 21 August, 1978.

Online retail giant Amazon is celebrating the birthday of Charles Eames with a pinboard that collects together replicas of his designs sold on the site.
Amazon's roundup – titled Happy Birthday Charles Eames – is part of its Pinterest-style Beautiful Things stream, which features groupings of products curated by Amazon's product team.
Clicking on the minimal square images on the pinboard takes visitors through to Amazon's sales pages for products including replicas of the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, Molded Plastic Chairs and Hang it all coat rack.
The replica designs are being sold for between £ 30 and £ 350 ($ 45 and $ 499), well below the prices for authorised versions.
For example, the Eames Lounge Chair – an iconic design with black leather upholstery and a bent plywood seat, backrest and arms – is advertised on Amazon's board for £ 350 ($ 499).
An official version produced by Vitra - which is authorised to make and sell Eames products in Europe and the Middle East - is currently for sale online via British retailer John Lewis for between £ 3.900 and £ 5.050.
Herman Miller, which holds the US licence for Eames products, offers the same chair together with its matching ottoman for $ 4.935.
Also included in the Amazon collection are original items like Taschen's Eames coffee table book and a DVD collection of the Eames' pioneering short films.

Courtesy: www.dezeen.com

Should Eames' Design Classics Be Copied?

The Aldi chair is a steal (perhaps too literally).

If you can't afford the real deal, is it ever okay to buy a "replica" of something?
Aldi, the Germany-based discount supermarket chain, is in a little hot water for selling a molded plastic chair that looks very much like the iconic Eames chair. The Eiffel Chair, as Aldi is calling them, is being sold online (currently sold out) as a pair for just £39.99, or approximately $58. That is a steal (perhaps even literally?) compared to the $438 base price of the DSW Molded Plastic Dowel-Leg Side Chair Charles and Ray Eames designed for Herman Miller in 1950, available for purchase at Design Within Reach.
The similarity between the two designs was first called out on Twitter by furniture designer Rupert Blanchard, but Aldi responded to Dezeen saying that their chairs do not infringe on any design rights.
The Guardian architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright defended Aldi, tweeting "[Isn't] this exactly what Charles Eames would have wanted?" He continued, "[The] licensing model that sees Eames designs elevated to luxury collectibles goes utterly against everything they stood for," implying that the designers would have wanted their designs to be available to the masses.
A $60 chair would most likely vary widely in quality and craftsmanship from a $400 chair, and the two versions would most likely be competing for two very different consumers. And legally speaking, according to Dezeen, it is legal for Aldi under current UK law to sell replicas of famous design pieces, as copyright law only covers industrial designs for 25 years after they are first marketed. (New copyright law is set to come into effect this summer, however, which would protect the Eames chair.)
Still, even if it is perfectly legal for Aldi to sell this chair, should it? And would you buy it?

See: https://twitter.com/RupertBlanchard/status/738003920782561280/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Courtesy: curbed.com

The Short Films of Charles and Ray Eames at Metrograph in New York

June 5, 2016: Join Metrograph in New York for a special screening of seven short films by Charles and Ray Eames.

Charles and Ray were prolific filmmakers, making 125 experimental, educational, and just plain entertaining shorts over the course of more than thirty years. This showcase offers a selection of their 35mm films, preserved by the Library of Congress:

_Two Baroque Churches, 11 min., 1955
_Eames Lounge Chair, 2 min., 1956
_Toccata for Toy Trains, 14 min., 1957
_Information Machine, 10 min., 1957
_Day of the Dead, 15 min., 1957
_The Smithsonian Institution, 20 min., 1965
_Powers of Ten, 9 min., 1977

Event Details:
The Short Films of Charles and Ray Eames
Sunday, June 5, 2016 at 1:00 pm
$12.00 – Purchase tickets here.

Metrograph:
No. 7 Ludlow Street
New York NY 10002
212.660.0312

Kinfolk #20: The Travel Issue

Kinfolk Issue Twenty: For the summer edition of Kinfolk, we want to draw attention not only to far-flung locations but also to those who choose to stay local and see their surroundings anew. Worldly experiences don’t start and end at the baggage claim, and it’s what we do with those memories once we’ve unpacked our suitcases that really makes a difference in the long run. After all, travel is a mentality as much as an action, so it doesn’t matter if our adventures start on the side of an alpine mountain or end in our living rooms. Simply getting out there and interacting with the world around us can be just as satisfying as any poolside retreat.

Read all at: www.kinfolk.com/kinfolk-issue-twenty-travel-issue/

"The House That Modernism Built" at Bechtler Museum of Modern Art

"The House That Modernism Built" will present the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art's rich mid-20th-century art collection alongside furniture, textile, and ceramic holdings on loan from various institutions including Eames Office, Herman Miller Archives, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design along with works from private collectors.
The exhibition will illustrate how the modern aesthetic shaped people’s lives during the 20th century throughout the United States and the affinity of aesthetic and philosophical principles that influenced art and design during this period. In particular, the show will emphasize process, examining how designers and artists considered and tackled projects and problems, and how the innovations in other disciplines from the sciences to the humanities influenced their direction and thinking. To trace the creative process and critical approach to problem solving, the exhibition will include prototypes, design plans, and manufactured pieces alongside drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures.
While the scope of the show will be international, it will draw attention to design innovations particularly embraced in the United States with a regional focus on production in North Carolina. The works date from 1920 through 1980, but the groundbreaking choices of material and manufacturing processes by makers such as Victor Vasarely, Zoltan Kemeny, Kenneth Noland, Roy Lichtenstein, Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, and Buckminster Fuller remain vital, revealing how these larger principles of modernism continue to resonate in our lives today.

Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 420 South Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina (U.S.A.)

On View: March 24, 2016 - September 11, 2016

See more at: http://bechtler.org/Collection/House-that-modernism-built#sthash.hkTU7w7m.dpuf

Milan Fuorisalone 2016: Hella Jongerius celebrates Eameses in Vitra Pop Up Store

Vitra is moving into a temporary location as part of the Fuorisalone events in Milan’s city centre: CasaVitra, in the vicinity of Corso Como, exhibits the spatial installation 'Colour Machine, which is dedicated to the Vitra Colour & Material Library, presenting Hella Jongerius’ insights and inspirations about colours, textiles and materials. The lounge on the second level of CasaVitra is furnished with Eameses' products from the Vitra Home Collection, providing an inviting space where visitors can linger and enjoy the atmosphere.

Courtesy: yellowtrace.com