News: America’s Blueprint. Words and pictures for your parents’ Constitution.

Friday, May 08, 2015

News: America’s Blueprint. Words and pictures for your parents’ Constitution.

/.../ In explaining the process of design to an audience at Harvard, Charles Eames once resorted to parable. In India, he explained, people of the lowest caste would eat off banana leaves. People a bit higher up the social scale would eat off a ceramic dish whose shape was inspired by the banana leaf. Moving even farther up the social scale, these dishes—talis—might be elegantly glazed or made of fine bronze. “I suppose some nut has a gold tali that he’s eaten off of,” Eames speculated, “but I’ve never seen one.” Eventually, though, people lacking in neither means nor knowledge chose to abandon the elaborate talifor the simple, uncomplicated, and functional banana leaf. In many respects, this return to the basic elements of design lies at the heart of this reissue of Bruce and Esther Findlay’s Your Rugged Constitution /.../

May 08, 2015, by Tara Helfman

Courtesy: weeklystandard.com

Read all at: www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america-s-blueprint_941046.html

Eamesiana is a project by Andrea Terranova and Raffaela Cardia, italian trends scouts on contemporary design.

"The Eameses created the future we're still living"

metropolismag.com

Charles Eames (1907–78) and Ray Eames (1912–88) gave shape to America's twentieth century. Their lives and work represented the US's defining movements: the West Coast's coming-of-age, the economy's shift from making goods to producing information, and the global expansion of American culture. The Eameses embraced the era's visionary concept of modern design as an agent of social change, elevating it to a national agenda. Their evolution from furniture designers to cultural ambassadors demonstrated their boundless talents and the overlap of their interests with those of their country. In a rare era of shared objectives, the Eameses partnered with the governments (US, India) and the country's top businesses to lead the charge to modernize postwar America.