The Eames Houses: Charles and Ray Eames Residential Architecture is the first comprehensive account of the Eameses' architecture—all eight houses they designed between 1945 and 1955, several of them published here for the first time.
About This Book
Charles and Ray Eames are remembered first for chairs, films and exhibitions, and their architecture is usually reduced to a single building: Case Study House No. 8 in Pacific Palisades. Eckart Maise, a board director of the Charles & Ray Eames Foundation and formerly Vitra's chief design officer, widens the view to the whole of their residential work and shows the same thinking running through every discipline they touched. For the Eameses a house was a problem to be solved rather than a style to be applied—structural clarity, prefabricated parts and open, adaptable plans that could serve as a background to work and everyday life. Sketches, drawings, letters and photographs from the Eames Office archive sit alongside newly made diagrams and models, and across six chapters the houses are read against the couple's furniture, toys, textiles and graphic design.
Key Features
- All eight houses designed by Charles and Ray Eames between 1945 and 1955
- A full chapter on Case Study House No. 8, with newly commissioned photography
- Archival sketches, drawings, letters and photographs, many previously unpublished
- Newly produced diagrams and models that clarify the design process
- Text contributions by Catherine Ince, with forewords by Norman Foster and Eames Demetrios
- Published to accompany an exhibition in Milan planned to travel internationally
What You'll Discover
- How the Eameses approached architecture as problem-solving, favouring flexible systems over fixed aesthetics
- The part prefabrication and industrial components played in their residential work
- Lesser-known and previously unpublished buildings set alongside the familiar Case Study House No. 8
- How ideas about domestic life moved between their houses and their work in furniture, toys, textiles and graphics
About the Author
Eckart Maise is an independent design consultant, a board director of the Charles & Ray Eames Foundation and a former chief design officer of Vitra. Catherine Ince is an independent curator and the foundation's first research fellow. Norman Foster founded Foster + Partners, which he chairs; Eames Demetrios, a grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, directs the Eames Office in Los Angeles and has written widely about them.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 210 × 315 mm
- Pages: 288
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781837293124
- Publisher: Phaidon
Perfect For: Architects, designers and students of midcentury modernism, and readers who know the Eameses through their furniture and want to understand the buildings behind it.