daniel ostroff Introduction for the beginning of a fi lm about their molded texts provides a useful guide to their work and plywood chair—the one designated by Time allows for the widest possible range of subjects. magazine as the “design of the century”—Charles Charles observed that regardless of the product, Eames and Ray Eames wrote: “The problem of “the formula is the same for everything.”4 Here we designing anything is in a sense the problem of see how this “formula” applied to a variety of cre- designing a tool. And as in designing a tool it is ative problem-solving tasks. usually wise to have a pretty clear idea of what you The Eames Offi ce had three kinds of clients: want the thing to do. The need it is to fi ll, its par- businesses; public organizations, which included ticular objective.”1 museums, libraries, and government agencies; By approaching their work with this attitude, and teaching institutions. Examples of all of their as simple as it may seem, and by committing them- work, jobs where they purveyed not only designs selves to a “nuts and bolts” process, the Eameses but also ideas, are found throughout this volume. had an extraordinary impact on our world. They Clients in the business sector included the furni- created a well-documented legacy of architecture, ture companies Herman Miller and Vitra, plus ibm, furniture, toys, fi lms, exhibitions, books, and Westinghouse, Polaroid, and Boeing. Public sector graphic design. clients included the governments of the United My objective with this book is to present another States, India, and Puerto Rico, and the Secretariat important aspect of their legacy. of the United Nations. In addition to all of the “good goods” that they The Eameses gave exemplary service as visiting produced, the Eameses were prolifi c as educators, professors at many universities, including the making many important contributions to the University of Georgia, the University of California, world of ideas. and Harvard University, and they delivered lectures Underlying all of their work is the principle at many more. that design should not be an act of creative self- The communication of ideas was a fundamental expression but rather a process of problem solving. aspect of their work, and it involved the same kind This book is a guide to the Eames process: how, in of iterative steps that they used to develop their their own words, they did what they did. designs. In this volume are texts on the develop- Process texts are found among their handwrit- ment of the Eames House, as they fi rst sketched it ten notes to themselves, published articles, inter- in 1945, as they modeled it in three dimensions in views, fi lm scripts, letters, commissioned reports, 1948, and as it was completed in 1949. In another and speeches. I selected texts from any Eames part of this book are all seven of Charles’s draft s source where they provided lessons, and where the of their design process diagram. inspirations that guided them or the insights that They oft en used the phrase “nuts and bolts” motivated them are revealed. As design historian when talking about their work, and this is a bet- Ralph Caplan once said, “Charles Eames was not ter refl ection of their eff orts than any attempt to always teaching, but when you were with him you categorize them by style. When they applied them- were always learning.”2 selves to product design they developed the tech- Charles and Ray worked on a great variety of niques and machines by which their products are projects over the years and these texts are pre- still produced today. When they created an exhibi- sented chronologically. In 1977 Charles told a group tion they were responsible for every aspect, from at the Smithsonian Institution: “Most any time I’m the research and creation of the didactic material asked to talk about a general subject, I fi nd I can to the conception and construction of displays. only go through with it if I can relate it in some Their exhibitions were presented all over the world, way with actual current work that’s going on in our including at the Louvre, the British Museum, offi ce.”3 The chronological presentation of their the National Museum of Poland in Warsaw, the introduction · xiii 1405199_int_CS6.indd xiii 10/17/14 10:43 AM Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles I mean, there’s the passive and the active thing. County Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian A rose is functioning when it smells, and a rose Institution. As testimony to the lasting quality of knows darn well it is functioning or else it wouldn’t this work, the 1961 Eames exhibition Mathematica get the bees there.11 is on permanent display at the Boston Museum of Science and the New York Hall of Science. Function was never about theory for Charles and The Eameses’ writings are free of theory Ray, it was about designs that work, that provided because they weren’t adherents of a particular ide- “service and performance” to those “particular ology of design or philosophy of aesthetics. This individuals” who would use their products, see is evident in their furniture, as Eames Demetrios their fi lms, and attend their exhibitions. Charles points out in An Eames Primer. “Their La Chaise said that the “role of the architect or the designer chair and their esu were done within two or three is that of a very good, thoughtful host, all of whose years of each other. One is all curves, the other all energy goes into trying to anticipate the needs right angles.”5 In the words of their friend Bill Lacy, of his guests—those who would enter the build- “There is no Eames style, only a legacy of problems ing and use the objects later.”12 Eames chairs are beautifully and intelligently solved.”6 distinctively strong and lightweight with people- Some have classifi ed the Eameses as modern- friendly radius edges. Eames fi lms are characteris- ists. In fact, they insisted that they were not “-ists” tically short and to the point, and oft en use humor of any kind.7 Although the word “function” appears to get ideas across. To the extent they considered throughout these texts, it’s also imprecise to think the appearance of things, it was in this way: “The of Charles and Ray as functionalists because of decisions that produce a really functional their delimited view of function. As Charles told environment are no different from those that the aia, “I’m thinking of function in terms of ulti- set the aesthetics of that environment, unless mate service to the particular individual.”8 one has an extremely limited or brutal view of With regard to “ultimate service” they fully function.”13 committed themselves to the consideration of When asked by the mother of a young man what “everything” in their analysis of needs, and the use would prepare her son for a creative career, Charles of all the tools and information they could access. suggested that painting and drawing the boy could In response to a line in an E. E. Cummings poem, do on his own time. However, he said, “if he does “who cares if some one-eyed son of a bitch invents take any art courses, they should be in history and a machine to measure spring with?” Charles coun- appreciation.”14 It was from their own studies of tered, “I care.”9 They had a conviction that “you historic examples that Charles and Ray derived have to use the rational methods as far as possible. one of their most important insights. They decon- You must be a fool to decide in favor of less infor- structed the process by which great things were mation instead of more.”10 traditionally produced and observed that these The Eameses believed in evolutionary rather were created in a context of constraints. Their writ- than revolutionary design, and their emphasis ings are fi lled with historical references to all of on the important role of evolution in design is as the arts, including Paul Revere’s silverware, Native closely linked to the natural order of things as one American Kachina dolls, Mayan temples, Chartres can imagine. What they applied from their study Cathedral, the hand ax, and the Windsor chair. of the natural world is that it is the attributes that In 1958, Charles Eames was one of eight archi- work that endure. Reference this exchange from tects and designers who responded to a magazine a Q&A with Charles aft er that same speech about editor’s request for a statement on furnishing the architectural design to the aia: home. All of the other contributors illustrated their responses with photographs of contemporary question You assume all parts (of a design) interiors furnished with their own current designs. function? Charles was the exception; instead of showing how eames Oh, my God, yes. I mean, don’t you he would design a room using his furniture, he think you are functioning when you smell submitted a photograph of a nineteenth century something? Indian pueblo. His point was not that this was a question Beg pardon? style to be copied; rather, he was demonstrating eames Well, it’s functioning in that it smells . how limitations could result in good design.15 xiv 1405199_int_CS6.indd xiv 11/22/14 9:41 PM This must have raised a few eyebrows in the alizes their work in the continuum of world history. charged consumer world of the late 1950s, but the Rather than take credit for doing something new, application of constraints is a subject to which the the Eameses argued, by referencing history and Eameses returned oft en.