Inside the Eames House

After much thought and deliberation I decided to do a small post on the Eames house, also known as Case Study House No. 8 since it was an experiment in American residential architecture sponsored by the Arts & Architecture magazine. They commissioned major architects of the day, such as Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen and Richard Neutra to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes for the United States residential boom.

What we can see above and below is the result located in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles. In the end it was finished by 1949 so the husband-and-wife team could move in and it could serve them as their home and studio. I’m not one to merge up photographs from different photographers but I thought this selection was a very good representation of the house and how it has transcended over the years, you couldn’t pinpoint it to one specific era. That’s what’s so fascinating about their work and the other designers in which I am interested in like Dieter Rams and Alvar Aalto, I also really respect this duo for their creative prowess and general lust for life.

Interesting to see them using a grid pattern of sorts even in their homely environment which creates structure and conformity against the quite brash and wild planting. You can really see it in full effect in the below photograph, for example notice the balcony and then how the furnishings run down and away in lines almost like they correspond with the corrugated roofing. The green and brown contrast is so far apart in terms of colour but also very much tied together since they’re both natural elements opposed to the glass and metal that surrounds the space. All of it is efficient and functional, a great space that was not only useful back then and liveable but also useable now at this current time and still structurally sound.

Photography sourced from Tim Street-Porter and the Eames foundation which I have linked to below and own all the copyrights to these images. The first set of four really gives us an idea of the exterior and also the interior with its furnishings, then the last set really shows us the vastness and openness of the space with nothing in. These were taken just before the LACMA exhibition where they transferred all living room furnishings to the Museum for a showcase. I hope you like what I put together here and maybe you learned something that you can take away today, if not you can still admire the imagery below.

www.eamesfoundation.org
www.timstreet-porter.com

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