Table Of Content
Seeing their workspace was one of my favorite parts because it gave me a little understanding of their daily lives while they were dreaming up their ingenious creations. I don’t want to give away too much of the Eames House experience because that’s half the fun of the trip, but be sure to spend plenty of time looking at all the fantastic collections inside the home. Ray and Charles Eames love buying and trading for different folk art pieces and other unique furniture works, and I could have spent hours gazing into their life. Located in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, the Eames House was designed and built by the husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames in 1949 as their personal residence and studio. Until today, 20 out of the 36 experimental prototypes still exist, although many were never built to begin with. Most of the case study houses can be found in Southern California, and a few are also in Northern California and San Diego.
Eames House, Pacific Palisades 1948
As Charles Eames said, “the role of the architect, or the designer, is that of a very good host, all of whose energies go into trying to anticipate the needs of his guests.”† Conversely, when acting as a host, Eames was also acting as a designer. Part of producing persuasive architecture was the performance of architecture for guests. In the Eames house, the living space mirrors the studio, the kitchen acting as a doppelgänger of the darkroom. Both are spaces of living as a performative kind of work, where experiences are prepared in order that they might be simultaneously remembered and recorded,  consumed and shared, treasured and distributed, private and public. A 1.4-acre site near the coast in Pacific Palisades, on a wooded bluff that was once part of Will Rogers' large estate, was selected. The design was first sketched out by Charles Eames with fellow architect Eero Saarinen in 1945 as a raised steel and glass box projecting out of the slope and spanning the entrance drive before cantilevering dramatically over the front yard.
Charles & Ray
He told me he'd intended to come off as "pretentious" in our conversation about the chair, but then I caught him while he was driving and we just had to do real talk. He used to work in production design in Los Angeles, where he'd see it used to convey a sense of refinement on sets, and he got one of his own for his home office around spring 2021. He likes the history, the quality, and the aesthetic, and it doesn't hurt that people comment on it when they see it in the background of video calls. "You feel cool in it. You feel like you're the boss of the house. And because it's expensive, it's aspirational because it takes up a lot of space," Julia Mack, an interior designer in Brooklyn, New York, said.
Ray and Charles Eames get a new gallery in Richmond, Calif. - Fast Company
Ray and Charles Eames get a new gallery in Richmond, Calif..
Posted: Thu, 01 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
The Eames Foundation
The brash sleekness of the design made it a favorite backdrop for fashion shoots in the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps the proof of its success in fulfilling its program is the fact that it remained at the center of the Eames' life and work from the time they moved in (Christmas Eve, 1949) until their deaths. The Eames House, or Case Study House #8, was designed by Charles and Ray Eames to serve as their primary residence and secondary work studio.
How Many Case Study Houses Still Exist?
Charles passed in 1978 and Ray passed in 1988, exactly ten years later, to the day. The Getty Conservation Institute is continually partnering with the Eames Foundation on the 250 Year Project to conserve this historic landmark for long-term enjoyment. The 2019 GCI publication, the Eames House Conservation Management Plan, outlines the preservation of the home’s materials and cultural significance.
The house was constantly altered through their lifetimes by Charles and Ray, it is now preserved in its 1988 (date of Ray’s death, 10 years to the day after Charles) state for eternity, well 250 years; as the fundraising campaigns had it. Charles and Ray moved into the House on Christmas Eve, 1949, and lived there for the rest of their lives. The interior, its objects and its collections remain very much the way they were in Charles and Ray’s lifetimes. The house they created offered them a space where work, play, life, and nature co-existed.
The house and studio sit diagonally facing the ocean, aligned north to south along a retaining wall that supports a steep embankment of eucalyptus trees to the west of the structures. These industrial materials were carefully arranged into a steel frame of regular bays measuring seven-and-a-half inches wide by twenty feet high. The short leg of the house is three bays wide and eight bays long, including a structural overhang of one bay for the rear patio. A small courtyard with a width of four bays separates the house from the five-bay studio. These rhythmic, steel-framed bays are further divided into smaller rectangular shapes of varying sizes and are filled with either clear or frosted glass, pylon, wood, or stucco.
The Design of the House
What the film with its charms leaves strangely obscure is the pure structure of the Eames’ house itself. Help us share the Eameses’ joy and rigor with future visitors, so they mayhave a direct experience of Charles and Ray’s approach to life and work. No refunds or date exchanges will be issued, except when the site is closed in response to elevated fire or Covid-19 concerns. For the safety of the staff and others, please cancel your visit if you are sick or have been in contact with any person who has or may have contracted Covid-19 in the last 2 weeks, prior to the tour. Young men, especially those with higher incomes, have a good amount of purchasing power. As many of them are getting married later or foregoing buying houses, they've also got cash to spend.
The Foundation
This was something that had to be done to obtain the necessary funds to address the general wear and tear on the house. During this time, the deteriorated floor tiles were also removed, which exposed the original concrete floor below. The interior of the house is sometimes described as maximalist, which sparked controversy as it was so contrasting to the much-loved Modernism-style.
Yes, I hope that one-day interior tours will be offered, but I also respect that historical materials are susceptible to wear. No matter what, visiting the Eames House, even if just an exterior tour, is entirely worth a trip across the country. The Eames House is an essential milestone in the prefabrication and industrial design history. The house is constructed almost entirely from prefabricated materials carefully arranged to create a flexible and adaptable living space.
The contents of the house—artwork, objects collected from foreign travel, flower arrangements, colorful textiles, vintage toys, and Eames-designed furnishings—are a window into the Eameses’ approach to life and design. The landscaped site is part of the sensory experience through the aroma of the surrounding eucalyptus trees, the play of light and shadow on the glass walls, and views to the Pacific Ocean. The Eames House reflects the couple’s novel ideas about materials, construction, and industrial design and provides an intimate view into the lives of its onetime occupants. The Eames House (also known as Case Study House No. 8) is a landmark of mid-20th century modern architecture located in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The Eameses nestled this iconic piece of architecture in an idyllic setting overlooking the Pacific Ocean just north of Santa Monica, sided by an expansive meadow of eucalyptus trees. Its materials, interior collections, and landscaping are maintained as they were during Charles and Ray’s lifetimes; all three elements tell the story of the couple’s life and work. Along with the retaining concrete wall, a simple steel frame was used for the structure of the house. The steel frame used 4-inch H-columns for the walls and 12-inch deep web joists for the roof. The steel frame was filled in with different solid and transparent colored panels arranged to create a shifting light in the interior throughout the day.
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