Eames house: a gift for all your little gifts...

From reading Beatriz Colomina's essay on the philosophy behind the Eames house, you get a sense that Charles and 

Ray Eames were empathetic individuals who lived a very wondrous and optimistic life. The photographs they themselves set up and shot of their architectural work contain abundant images of children playing; the Eames saw in the childs mind a vast wealth of honest thought and straightforward intention, which they considered the basis for the best design ethic. This is evident in their career-spanning production of entertaining children's toys and in the many examples of design they had crafted with a specific acquaintance in mind. Charles Eames is quoted as follows -

"The lounge chair, for example, was really done as a present to a friend, Billy Wilder, and has since been reproduced."

The Eames had found a way to establish a career on

 the basis of creating good design for friends, friends who had specific design needs that were apparent to their contemporaries. From the same statement by Charles -

"...a multiple-exposure photograph of Billy Wilder moving back and forth on the plywood lounge chair of 1946, claiming that it was designed so that the "restless Wilder can easily jump around while watching television."

I want to use this quote to digress to another aspect that Colomina looks at w

hich speaks to me as a photo major. She mentions that the Eames were fond of using photography both as a process towards completing their design projects and as a means to document their work in a tight and narratively controlled manner. The photograph was also used by the Eames as a conceptualization tool; though pre-digital, they would cut and past negatives/prints to make photorealistic mockups of the ideas that they could not yet take to production.

The third and final important point that I take fr

om this reading is the Eame's philosophy behind the place architecture holds in our lives. They believed not only in architecture free from constraints of historical tradition and figurative ornament, but they rationalized this with the notion that the home is but a vessel for its inhabitants and their dearest possession. Here we see a train of thought quite separate from the traditional Modernist aesthetic of pure, reduced form, though in the end they have similar results. Eames architecture may seem cold and minimalist, however that is simply not the case - Charles and Ray believed that the heart and soul of a house, that which makes it truly a comfortable and safe home, is the way in which we fill our houses, and how well we allow the display of our personal objects within the space. Eames furniture and architecture is designed not to take any attention away from the objects placed in and on their surfaces.

As a final addendum, I would like to connect the Eames' joyful approach to their work with a favorite photographer of mine, Abelardo Morell. Morell takes a lot of inspiration from his two children, and often photographs from their wondrous perspective or documents the fanciful games and worlds they can create from thin air. A quote of his has stuck with me for many years now. 

"The stuff right under your eyes is the most wonderful universe - if you care to look with young eyes"