The Eames Family Didn't Copy the Eames House. They Upgraded It
Ray and Charles Eames were under no pretenses about the need for a widespread architectural revolution. In 1944, three years after founding their legendary design company Eames Office, and a year before the end of World War II, the couple wrote in Arts & Architecture Magazine, “In the world at large, 50 million families will be in need of shelter as the result of war. The enormity of such a need cannot even be partially satisfied by building techniques as we have known and used them.” This issue was clearly still ringing in their ears a year later, as the same magazine published the Eames’ first architectural plans, a housing system costing a fraction of the average new-build, buildable in record times, and entirely made of industrial parts intended for factories, boats, and airplanes. After some tweaking, those plans became what is today a protected American architectural landmark, the Eames House.
Now, a new project allows you to create your own version of this architectural masterpiece. The Eames Pavilion System is a prefabricated housing project, allowing customers to collage together their favorite pieces of the Eames’ architecture creating a unique modular structure.
“When I saw the first structure we created, it was fantastic because it wasn't a replica of Eames House, but it was the idea of the Eames House,” says Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, as well as the director of the Eames Office. “What we're doing is distilling the essence of the Eames House and the research they did to create something that will be more useful than a straight-up replica. It's not an exercise in looking in the past; it's an exercise in how this can be part of the future.”
Together with his team and Spanish manufacturing company Kettal, Demetrios has pored over the Eames’ lesser-known architectural works — including two unrealized designs for filmmaker Billy Wilder and the Modular House, a concept for low-cost pre-fabricated housing — and channeled the findings into an adaptable pavilion system.
Before it's available to buy, the Eames Pavilion System is exhibiting at Triennale Milano until May 10. But while the version on view bears a strong resemblance to the Eames House in its open-plan design and abundance of small rectangular windows, Eames Demetrios tells me the possibilities for this prefabricated housing concept are endless.
What are your memories of the Eames House?
Eames Demetrios: It’s a pretty amazing place. We always loved it as kids without really knowing its status in the world of architecture. One of the things that was great from a kid's perspective is that it was always a very indoor-outdoor experience. When [Charles and Ray Eames] would come back from the office, they would open a couple of doors, including along the axis between the two structures.
It's very unpretentious in a sense. Nature is right there; they redesigned the structure to protect the meadow, and that works great in the way it comes across.
I imagine that, as a kid, being exposed to such an incredible space from a young age must color your view of everything after.
It totally does. There were five grandkids, and sometimes we'd come en masse. My older siblings were there one summer, and Charles and Ray created, among other things, these big piles of boxes and a rope swing that you could swing off the stairs and knock the boxes down.
It's always been a family home. When we talk about the house, we always want people to know that it was a home on top of everything else. It's where Charles and Ray lived the rest of their lives once they moved in.
How does the house relate to the other architectural work they did? And to this new pavilion system you’re launching?
From the beginning, Charles and Ray were interested in solving problems in a way that helped a lot of people. When you design furniture for a client for their house, it’s great, but in a way, you're really helping that family and maybe a large circle of friends; you're not really reaching that many people. They wanted to design things in a more universal way, both in their furniture, which is more famous, but also in the approach to architecture.
The Eames House has often been viewed as a singularity in Charles and Ray's work. You'll often hear people summarize that they did a huge number of chairs, they did a number of films, and they did one house. That's not true, but we know what people mean. The Eames House is the one that has really captured the imagination.
They thought through a total of about eight houses in a little more than 10 years, from around ‘45 till the late ‘50s. They were trying to perfect this modular system, and that's really what we uncovered in our research. The idea was that by being very rigorous and disciplined in the module, you were actually liberating people to have incredible freedom in what they designed.
They attempted to get the Federal Housing Authority to take on this research project. It never took off, but they did a lot of work on it. And so basically we picked up that work.
Some of the configurations you recommend for the pavilion system range from a recording studio to a two-story house. How many different options are there?
There are almost literally infinite options. But there are two major options that you're getting at, one of which is [that it can be used as] interior architecture. You could optimize your recording studio to be in that structure, within your home or in your garage. Similarly, in open-plan offices, people often say, ‘gosh, we need a little more privacy,’ so it's perfect as a conference room.
That's also true of the outdoor version. When you start playing with it, you really could link up many of them to be almost like a warehouse, very open plan, or you could create all these different spaces within it.
Before Kettal ships the house to wherever it goes, somebody who is part of the assembly process goes to the site where it's installed. That's actually built into the price because that's where a lot of prefab houses flounder.
It's also designed so that you can take it apart and move it somewhere else. I think it's important for people to think of it as custom housing because of all the different flavors you can make. You're going to be able to make one with a huge variety of colors, maybe none of the colors that are on the facade of the Eames house. You're going to be able to make interiors, you're going to be able to have a second floor. You're going to be able to make it huge. On a lot of these systems, people [will] find ways to use them, to unlock a promise of the system that maybe we won't even have seen or understood.
I like how you nonchalantly say, ‘you can just pack this up and move it somewhere,’ but designing a structure with that capability is a lot of hard work. How did you develop this?
The first big idea was: Let's not just make a copy of the Eames House. People over the years have said to us, ‘We'd love to get an Eames house.’ And the thing I always say is, ‘The first thing you've got to do is build a hill,’ because it was tucked into the hillside.
What this meant was really understanding the house itself, but also simplifying [the design] to make it work as a modular home where you can order the parts and customize it. And yet, the detailing is incredibly consistent in terms of the thickness of the window sashes and things like that. Charles and Ray had this saying: The details aren't the details, the details make the product.
How do you navigate creating new projects while also staying true to Charles and Ray’s vision?
Art and design have a lot in common with each other, but one of the big differences is that when an artist dies, there's no more new work, and that's something we all understand about it. There's no designer I've ever heard of who said: When I die, instruct the manufacturers to destroy the machinery, they can never sell it again. There's always this implicit idea that the design equation includes it surviving the designer, and the corollary to that is that the designer has to choose somebody to make those decisions.
In many cases, the manufacturer just keeps on making it. But in the case of the Eames’ work, they asked the family to take care of it. [With the pavilion system,] we're at a point in time where we can pursue something that's much closer to their ambition. And one of the reasons Kettal is such a good partner is because they've figured out the systems as well as the aesthetic and design parts of that.
One of the things you mentioned earlier is that the scope of the Eames’ architectural work isn’t widely known. There's a new book, The Eames Houses, being unveiled alongside this pavilion system that’ll help shed light on that. Was there anything in the research for the book that surprised you?
In general, people have understood that Charles and Ray approached a lot of their problems in an architectural way, but to see that they were literally pursuing this for an extended period of time will be quite surprising.
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