EAMES CELEBRATION
Alison and Peter Smithson [Editors]
Alison and Peter Smithson [Editors]: EAMES CELEBRATION. Zeeland, MI/London: Herman Miller Furniture Company/ Architectural Design, 1966. First edition thus (Off-print from Architectural Design Magazine September 1966, sponsored by the Herman Miller Furniture Company. Quarto. Stapled printed wrappers. 40 pp. 172 black and white and color images. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print and rather uncommon. Wrappers mildly shelfworn, rubbed and creased, but a very good copy.
9.25 x 12 saddle-stitched softcover book with 40 pages and 172 black and white and color photographs and architectural and design drawings from the prodigious output of Ray and Charles Eames, dba the Eames Office from 1940 to 1966. Also included is an extensive chronological table showing notable events in the lives of Charles and Ray Eames as well as paralell significant architectural events in the USA. "Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects, etc., . . . the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se." -- Charles Eames
The earliest and most comprehensive examination of the influence of the Eames partnership published before the 1970s. Includes excellent photography for all of the Eames furniture, from the Saarinen organic Furniture contest collaborations in 1940 to the Aluminum Group, Compact sofas and more. Much material devoted to the beloved plywood designs and prototypes: LCW, DCM, DCW, ETW, screens, etc. Includes Herman Miller Furniture, the films and coursework, exhibitions, graphic design and exhibits from the prolific husband and wife team.
". . . everything hangs on something else . . ." -- Ray Eames
Contents:
- Eames Celebration (introduction) by Peter and Alison Smithson
- Chronological Table by Geoffrey Holroyd and Charles Eames
- Just a Few Chairs and a House: an Essay on the Eames Aesthetic by Peter Smithson
- And now Dharmas are Dying Out in Japan by Alison Smithson
- The Wit of Technology by Michael Brawne
- Architecture Creating Relaxed Intensity by Geoffrey Holroyd
- Children As Experts by Geoffrey Holroyd
- Designing a Lota (excerpt) by Charles Eames
Nothing says modernist perfection like an Eames design. Though they are best known to the general public for their furniture, the husband and wife duo of Charles and Ray Eames (1907-78 and 1912-88, respectively) were also forerunners in the fields of architecture, industrial design, photography, and film. This book covers all the aspects of their illustrious career, from the earliest furniture experiments and molded plywood designs to the Case Study Houses to their work for Herman Miller and films such as the seminal short, Powers of Ten.
When Peter Smithson died aged 79 in March 2003, The Times devoted a page of readers’ letters commenting on the buildings he had designed with his wife Alison. They ranged from glowing tributes to this "brilliant pair" and affectionate anecdotes from friends to a scathing critique of their first public building, the prize-winning Hunstanton School in Norfolk, which one man, who had taught there for 37 years condemned as "more suited to being a prison than a school."
This combination of accolades and attacks had accompanied the Smithsons throughout their long career ever since Hunstanton – known locally as the "glasshouse" – was completed in 1954. Controversial though it was, Hunstanton established Alison and Peter Smithson as leading lights of post-war British architecture.
All their subsequent projects – from the 1956 House of the Future, the visionary home exhibited at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, and the early 1960s Economist Building, to the early 1970s Robin Hood Gardens housing complex in east London – were infused with the same crusading zeal to build schools, workplaces and homes for a progressive, more meritocratic post-war society.
Those ideals were articulated at a CIAM conference in 1953 when Alison and Peter attacked the decades-old dogma propounded by Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius that cities should be zoned into specific areas for living, working, leisure and transport and that urban housing should consist of tall, widely spaced towers. The Smithsons’ ideal city combined different activities within the same areas and they envisaged modern housing being built as "streets in the sky" to encourage the residents to feel a sense of "belonging" and "neighbourliness."