Fifty Years Ago: Domus about Eames' Ovoid Theatre

This article was originally published in italian design magazine "Domus" 424 / March 1965:

The 1964-65 New York World's Fair IBM pavilion, designed by Charles Eames with Studio Saarinen, featured a suspended ovoid theatre over a canopy of steel trees, in which a multimedia show offered glimpses of the future.

/.../ Domus readers have already been given an anticipatory view of Charles Eames' famous IBM pavilion. Its main feature is the suspended theatre, an ovoid volume raised above the forest of steel tree-like structures which support the translucent roof over the open-air exhibit. A huge hydraulic lift (the People Wall) lifts a completely seated audience of five-hundred people fifty feet into the ovoid theatre (the lnformation Machine).
This audience,"withdrawn" from the crowd and isolated within the huge egg will be in the "centre" of an unexpected spectacle; as in a space-ship, of unusual dimensions, the spectator's feeling of surprise and uncertainty will predispose him to a greater emotion. There the show begins: a multiscreen film presentation, including motion picture and still slide projections, four sound systems, runways and stages for live actors appearances. Multiscreen large-scale projections had already been experimented by Eames (US Exhibition in Moscow, 1959) but now, for the first time, the theatre itself has been built together with the spectacle, the one being conceived in relation to the other /.../

Read all at: http://www.domusweb.it/en/from-the-archive/2012/09/15/charles-eames-ovoid-theatre.html

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, re-opens

In an essay on the work of Charles and Ray Eames, the design critic Ralph Caplan fixes upon a quote from Charles: “The details are not the details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections.” “Connections between what?” Caplan then asks rhetorically, answering, “Between such disparate materials as wood and steel, between such seemingly alien disciplines as physics and painting, between clowns and mathematical concepts, between people—architects and mathematicians and poets and philosophers and corporate executives.”
If that’s the task of the designer, imagine the task of the design museum that must explain all the connections—a design problem itself. How to bring together building models and slide rules and folios and quill pens and executive desks from over the centuries, explain their origins, tell the stories of their use, and make a visually dramatic display, without being boring or pandering? More prosaically, how do you make people pay to see forks and phones, when we have forks at home and phones in our pockets? That’s been the struggle for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for many years. In 2011, the museum took the major step of closing its heavy front doors for what it was calling a transformation. Today, they open to the public again.

Courtesy: The New Yorker

See all at: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/new-cooper-hewitt

Eames' "Power of Ten" opens the Second Edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Kerala State, India).

The second edition of the Kochi Biennale here, through March 29, is an exploration of the “Whorled” around us, puzzled over together by 93 artists from around the world.“Whorled Exploration” is spread over eight venues across Kochi, the queen of the Arabian Sea – a city that has a history of expeditions, trade, colonization, suffering and freedom. Aspinwall is the main venue for this year’s biennale and the colonial structure, which is a 150 years old warehouse of spices, has been transformed into a brewery of modern art.Internationally renowned artist Jitish Kallat, Artistic Director Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014, stated: “Two chronologically overlapping, but perhaps directly unrelated, historical episodes in Kerala during the 14th to 17th Centuries become parallel points of departure for Whorled Explorations. Drawing from them, allusions to the historical and the cosmological recur throughout the exhibition like exaggerated extensions to gestures we make when we try to see or understand something. We either go close to it or move away from it in space, to see it clearly; we also reflect back or forth in time to understand the present. Whorled Explorations draws upon this act of deliberation, across axes of time and space to interlace the bygone with the imminent, the terrestrial with the celestial.”In the words of Bose Krishnamachari, president and director of Kochi Biennale, “the second edition of Kochi Biennale maintains a unique character by yet again choosing an artist as the curator; celebrating its legacy as an artist-initiated project.”At Aspinwall, the visitors are welcomed with a film essay by Charles and Ray Eames titled “Powers of 10” that conveys the basic essence of the Biennale through the famous 9 minute video that throws light on man’s existence in an intensely complex universe that remains as an infinite entity holding thousands of galaxies together.

Courtesy: artofbihar.blogspot.com
http://artofbihar.blogspot.it/2015/01/kochi-muziris-biennale-whorled.html

News: The Henry Ford Museum Purchases Eames' Math Exhibit

If calculations, numbers and math just aren’t your thing, a new exhibit at Henry Ford Museum (Dearborn, Michigan) may just change that. Last week (march 20) the museum announced that it has acquired “Mathematica,” an exhibition conceptualized, designed and realized by Charles and Ray Eames in 1961. It conveys the world of numbers and mathematics through interactivity.
The exhibit in its entirety will be permanently on display in 2016.
It is the first exhibit added to the museum since it updated “Driving America.”
“Mathematica not only changed the way exhibitions were designed, but it was created to address a specific problem within the museum and education community that is still relevant today, which is a better way to convey mathematical principles and ideas to visitors,” said Patricia Mooradian, president of The Henry Ford. “Learning by doing has always been an important concept for our organization and with this acquisition we can now fully provide our visitors with unique, educational and entertaining elements that incorporate the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) platform.”
The design was initially created thanks to funding from IBM.
It uses kinetic installations, models, timelines, quotations, imagery, and physical interaction to explain mathematical principles, phenomena, ideas and applications.
“Mathematica reveals that the “world of numbers” represents a tiny percentage of the world of mathematics,” said Marc Greuther, chief curator and senior director, historical resources at The Henry Ford. “The exhibit sidesteps boundaries between education, play, art, and science—plus it’s recognized historically as an Eames design landmark.”
There are two other Eames exhibits on display in New York and Boston.
Staff at The Henry Ford are still hammering out the details on where and how to set up the exhibition, as well as when it will open to the public.

Courtesy: www.pressandguide.com

Read all at: www.pressandguide.com/articles/2015/03/20/news/doc550c22b2c5a39238133472.txt

News: An iPad stand for Eames fans

We have a thing for simple, smart design, which is probably why we are such an Apple fan. It’s also why we love so many of the Apple accessories designed with the same sensibility. So all it took was the silhouette of this Ray Tablet Stand handcrafted by Ciseal, and, yeah. We filed under Need One Now. Then added it to the Cool Mom Picks Indie Shop so you can grab one too.
Observant mid-century design fans may get the Ray reference; the molded plywood tablet stand with walnut veneer is inspired by Ray and Charles Eames’s illustrious LCW chair. In fact, the stand looks a lot like something the couple might have created themselves, could they even have conceived of iPads, Kindles, Nooks and Galaxy Tabs back when color television was considered technologically advanced.
I think the stand would look gorgeous on a kitchen counter, on a nightstand, or just on a desk. Maybe an Eames desk. Though that will set you back even more than a fully-loaded new iPad.
Find the gorgeously handmade to order Ray Tablet Stand by Detroit’s Ciseal at the Cool Mom Picks Indie Shop. It’s sized to fit pretty much any tablet.

Courtesy: coolmontech.com

The Eames' Iconic Molded Plastic Chair, Sawed in Half and Turned Into a Loveseat

How can the Eames' highly iconic DSR chair, originally made of metal, then fiberglass, then molded plastic, ever be enhanced? It's a question that designers have been asking themselves since 1948, when Charles and Ray Eames first entered a prototype of the classic chair into a MoMA competition for low-cost furniture design. Improving upon an Eames chair is nearly impossible, but last year the North Carolina firm of Clark Nexsen ingeniously turned the DSR side chair into a two-person love seat for a design competition co-sponsored by Herman Miller, manufacturer of Eames chairs. "We wanted to maintain the chair's classic profile, while expanding it to create a new and shared experience," says architect Matt Koonts, who worked on the project.
"The theme of the competition was to use the iconic DSR as both inspiration and canvas for expression," says Koonts. The result is an Eames chair cleaved in two, with a wide center panel of Baltic birch plywood sandwiched in between the molded plastic halves. The chair's metal base has been re-welded using longer rods, and a structural engineer at the firm was consulted to make sure the love seat could withstand the weight of two adults. It can.
Much like the Eames DSR chairs that Herman Miller sells in 14 different colors with three options for the hue of the base, the love seat's center section is interchangeable if a different material, texture or color is desired.
For their inventive take on the classic chair, Clark Nexsen took home the people's choice award in the design competition, which was held last November at the Museum for Contemporary Art and Design in Raleigh. The firm does not have the right to mass-produce the DSR2 love seat, since it's too similar to the original Eames design that Herman Miller owns the trademark to, but they can create versions of it for private customers. "We think the result is something Charles and Ray would appreciate."

Courtesy curbed.com

See: http://curbed.com/archives/2015/03/12/reinventing-the-eames-dsr-chair-as-a-loveseat.php

News: Turin Creative City for Design, said Unesco !

UNESCO recognises Turin with the title of Creative City for Design
The only Italian city winner among the nominations for 2014 which included 28 cities in 19 countries www.centrounesco.to.it
The communication arrives from Paris that from 1st December 2014 Torino is a UNESCO “CREATIVE CITY” for the DESIGN category.
"A Recognition - said Mayor Piero Fassino expressing the satisfaction of the City - of which we are proud and that is a credit to the creative ability and regenerative energy of Turin. An acknowledgement that increasingly spurs us on to make Turin an innovative and cutting-edge city in every field".
The theme of design (one of the main categories of the Creative Cities Network, the one in which the city was a candidate) is suitable for the city of Turin, which has made this one of the keys for industrial and post-industrial development, and for which it has already received prestigious international awards.
The decision to put forward Turin for this international network originated during a meeting that was held at UNESCO in Paris in February 2013, during which the deputy director for culture, architect Francesco Bandarini, explained the importance of undertaking this process of cooperation for promoting historic motor sports worldwide.
The candidacy responds to a vision of the future of the City that begins from a past linked to cars, from an essentially industrial vocation to one open to innovation in the fields of technology, culture, arts and tourism.
The themes are the promotion of the automotive history and supply chain, design as a creative innovation, technological progress for mobility and vehicles, regeneration and sustainable urban development.
The title gives credit to Turin for having learned to broaden its identities in recent years, combining new vocations in research and technology, training and knowledge, culture, arts and tourism with its historic industrial profile.
Members of the Steering Committee, coordinated by the City of Turin, were UNESCO Centre of Turin, Turin Polytechnic University, National Automobile Museum (MAUTO), the Institute of Applied Arts and Design, the Chamber of Commerce of Turin, the Historical Italian Automotoclub (ASI), the European Institute of Design, the University of Turin, SiTI (Higher Institute on Territorial Systems for Innovation) , Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, the Piedmont Region, MiBACT-General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of Piedmont, Turin Tourism Agency.
This therefore is an important award that the city has achieved thanks to its art and design projects and to the activities carried out along with numerous partners.
It was all the result of an initial proposal of ASI, the Italian Historical Automotoclub, which has long strived for adequate recognition of historic motor sports as an integral part of the Italian cultural heritage and which has identified the capital, at a national and international level, of this process as Turin.
The working group that prepared the application consists of many important public and private entities: in addition to the City (the official sponsor) and ASI, the Regione Piemonte, Turin Polytechnic University, the FIAT Group, the National Museum of Automobile and the Regional Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Landscape of Piedmont also were a part. Already a World Design Capital, Torino has been inserted permanently into the CREATIVE CITIES UNESCO Network, a recognition which until now had been awarded by UNESCO to only 69 cities in the world who make culture and creativity a strategic vehicle for sustainable urban development.
Through Creative Cities Network UNESCO supports the formation of a network with the aim of promoting international cooperation between cities which, by joining, undertake to collaborate and develop partnerships with the aim of promoting creativity and cultural industries, sharing best practices, increasing participation in cultural life, and to mainstream culture in economic and social development plans. Creative Cities Network aims to find and enrich the cultural identity of a member city right in the middle of a growing trend towards internationalism.
The project focuses on the main excellence product of these cities, and finds a way to maintain its relevance in the life of the city, the local economy and social development.
The fields of excellence are classified as: literature, cinema, music, crafts and Folk Art, Design, Media Arts and Gastronomy.
Launched in 2004, "UNESCO Creative Cities Network is an incredible tool for cooperation, which reflects our commitment to support an incredible creative and innovative potential for expanding sustainable development paths," said the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova.

Torino join the following cities as new member of the design network:
Beijing (China)
Berlin (Germany)
Bilbao (Spain)
Curitiba (Brazil)
Dundee (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
Graz (Austria)
Helsinki (Finland)
Kobe (Japan)
Montreal (Canada)
Nagoya (Japan)
Seoul (South Korea)
Shenzen (China)
Shangai (China)
Saint-Etienne (France)
Santa Fé (USA)
Turin (Italy)

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Ph. Benedetta Terranova, Turin: new "Intesa - San Paolo Bank" Headquarter site (design Renzo Piano). 

Book: Graham Pullin, "Design Meets Disability"

In 1941, the US Navy commissioned the husband-and-wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames to design a lightweight splint for wounded soldiers to get them out of the field more safely. Metal splints of that period weren’t secure enough to hold the leg still, causing unnecessary death from gangrene or shock, blood loss, and so on.
The Eameses had been working on techniques to mold and bend plywood, and they were able to come up with this splint design — conforming to the body without a lot of extra joints and parts. The wood design became a secure, lightweight, nest-able solution, and they produced more than 150,000 such splints for the Navy.
Over the next decade, the Eameses would go on to refine their wood-molding process to create both sculpture and functional design pieces, most notably, the celebrated Lounge chair.
Graham Pullin, in his book, Design Meets Disability, cites this story as an example of a seemingly specialized design problem — improving a battlefield medical aid for wounded soldiers — that inspired a whole aesthetic in modernist furnishings. The chairs launched a thousand imitators, and a new ethos of simple, organic lines in household objects.

The Eameses’ unpainted wood splint, curved at its edges to keep the leg from falling off, with a targeted set of slots and holes for tying secure restraints. Bottom image courtesy of Hive.

Read all: https://medium.com/backchannel/all-technology-is-assistive-ac9f7183c8cd

News: Columbus Whitehall realizes it's sitting on valuable Eames chairs

They are old chairs, first and foremost. They could have been trash. But someone noticed that the seats being cleared out of Whitehall City Council (Columbus, Ohio) chambers weren’t junk.
“These are actually really valuable chairs,” said city spokeswoman Gail Martineau, gripping a big fiberglass scoop that held the rear ends of city visitors for nearly 50 years. “People collect these.”
In fact, they are Herman Miller Eames fiberglass shell chairs, authenticity stamped on their undersides, the Miller name there alongside the occasional piece of ancient chewing gum.
Martineau’s fiancé was the first to recognize the value in the seats, 89 of them pried out of the city’s meeting spot during a much-needed, $30,000 overhaul last summer.
Since then, they’ve been selling on eBay at a steady clip, pulling in nearly $5,000 for the city so far — more than the cost of the unremarkable black fabric chairs that replaced them.
“That would have gone into the trash,” Martineau said. “But instead, we’re making money back for the city for it.”
Charles and Ray Eames began selling their molded fiberglass chairs in 1950, but the line was eventually discontinued because of the environmental concerns attached to fiberglass production, according to the Herman Miller website.
The chair returned in 2004 — this time made of recyclable polypropylene — but there are still plenty of the original chairs around, especially on eBay.
The Whitehall chairs come in four colors, and none of them have legs. They’ve been pulling in an average of $110 apiece. There are no clear favorites, though seats with bolts don’t seem to sell nearly as well. Two gray chairs sold for $360; two orange, for $157.50.
Mark Heimrich had never heard of the Eames chair, but now he’s selling them. Heimrich, a co-owner of Ship Print eSell in Upper Arlington, has listed, packaged and mailed nearly every Whitehall chair. He had to buy boxes specially to fit them. The demand surprised him.
He’s used to that, though. It’s hard to say what people are going to buy, or what’s going to be popular tomorrow. Hummel figurines don’t sell anymore, and neither do Beanie babies. But he had a guy bring in a collection of Jimmy Buffett hats.
Those sold.

Courtesy: The Columbus Dispatch

see: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/03/09/whitehall-chairs.html

News: Loris Lora looks for California modernism's connections

What do Alfred Hitchcock, Edith Head, Peggy Moffitt and William Claxton have in common? They’re all featured in Loris Lora’s glorious, and unexpected, “Eventually Everything Connects” (Lowbrow: unpaged $40), a celebration of mid-20th century California modernism in visual form.
Lora, a 2014 BFA grad of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, takes her inspiration and her title from designer Charles Eames’ assertion that “Eventually everything connects — people, ideas, objects … The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.”
The work here, however, is entirely her own.
Designed as a Leporello — a book that unfurls like an accordion, revealing a double-sided mural, fan-folded, 6 feet long on each side — it traces the links between a variety of diverse Southern California figures, beginning with Eames and his wife, Ray, moving on to their friend Billy Wilder (portrayed here lounging in an Eames chair), and then across a variety of creative landscapes: jazz, architecture, the peculiar industry of the motion picture set.
In an interview on the blog It’s Nice That, Lora explains the genesis of the project, which grew out of an Art Center class on modernism.
“I was particularly interested in the relationships between some of my favorite creatives,” she recalls there. “… All of a sudden I was creating a ‘connect the dots’ map of all these designers, architects, entertainers, creatives, etc., which is now featured with the book.”
That map is included in “Eventually Everything Connects” as a guide to the images; it features small portraits and capsule bios of figures ranging from John Lautner to Ed Ruscha. That’s useful, and important, but the real draw here is the art itself.
“Eventually Everything Connects” works like a panorama, sweeping from private to public settings: the Eames’ house to the set of “Vertigo” to the Brown Derby and the Beverly Hills Hotel. Perhaps my favorite setting is a jazz club where Gerry Mulligan plays with Dave Brubeck while Claxton works his camera; in the audience are June Christy, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
The idea is to illustrate the ramifications of that Eames quote, to establish a sense of the ways in which ideas, art and expression, overlap. We tend to think in categories, to imagine that distinctions between individuals and aesthetics can be rigid, when in fact it is the other way around.
How could the figures here not influence each other? How could they not influence us now? Culture is a mash-up, more circular than linear; whatever order emerges is only available to us in hindsight, if even then.
Such a notion resides at the heart of “Eventually Everything Connects,” with its bright, bold illustrations — gouache mostly — and its recognition that the lines we imagine dividing art and artists are really points of intersection instead.
That’s one of the intentions of modernism, which sought to break down traditional hierarchies. In “Eventually Everything Connects,” Lora celebrates (both literally and figuratively) this horizontal vision, in stunning imagistic terms.

Read all at: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-loris-lora-looks-for-california-modernisms-connections-20150225-story.html

Courtesy: Los Angeles Times

News: Famous anchorman Tim Ross indulges his passion for Charles Eames

Tim Ross says: "One of my favourite quotes comes from the American designer Charles Eames: 'Take your pleasure seriously.' Eames believed we should give our passions the same respect and attention that we give our jobs".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/spectrum-now-2015/tim-ross-indulges-his-passion-for-design-at-spectrum-now-20150304-13pqps.html

Tim Ross' classic 1959 mid-century Sydney home, designed by architect Bill Baker. Photo: Eve Wilson
Courtesy The Sidney Morning Herald

Yale University Press announces An Eames Anthology

"An Eames Anthology" collects for the first time the writings of the esteemed American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, illuminating their marriage and professional partnership of fifty years. More than 120 primary‑source documents and 200 illustrations highlight iconic projects such as the Case Study Houses and the molded plywood chair, as well as their work for major corporations as both designers (Herman Miller, Vitra) and consultants (IBM, Polaroid). Previously unpublished materials appear alongside published writings by and about the Eameses and their work, lending new insight into their creative process. Correspondence with such luminaries as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen provides a personal glimpse into the advance of modernity in mid‑century America.

"An Eames Anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and Speeches
Charles Eames and Ray Eames", Edited by Daniel Ostroff

Price: $50.00 * ISBN: 978‑0‑300‑20345‑5 Paper over Board * eBook ISBN: 978‑0‑300‑21283‑9

420 pages, with 94 color + 129 b/w illus.

Yale University Press
PO Box 209040
New Haven , Connecticut
yuppublicity@yale.edu
http://yalebooks.com/

Build process of a Shell Chair in 12 animated gifs

See all at:
http://www.plataformaarquitectura.cl/cl/762142/la-construccion-de-la-silla-shell-de-charles-y-ray-eames-en-12-gifs

Courtesy plataformaarquitectura.cl

Eamesian Mood: Barton Restaurant, Barcelona, Spain.

Barton Restaurant, located on a corner in the Eixample district, represents a new approach to the Barcelona restaurant scene. The relaxed, informal atmosphere is reminiscent of Eames House: with chairs, cushions, large windows, wood, white floor, ladder ...
See all at: http://www.yellowtrace.com.au/barton-restaurant-barcelona/

Courtesy yellowtrace.com