Charles Eames
(1907 - 1978)
An American architect and designer, best known for his semifinal formfitting designs for chairs. He studied architecture under Eliel Saarinen and in 1940 collaborated with Eero Saarinen in designing a chair that won first prize in the organic furniture competition sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This chair, with a molded plywood shell, foam-rubber padding and innovative rubber-weld joints, unfortunately proved too expensive for mass manufacture, but Eames continued to pursue his goal of creating an artistically valid design that could also be produced by modern mass production techniques. In collaboration with his wife, Ray (Kaiser) Eames, he succeeded in 1946 with an elegantly simple chair consisting of a molded plywood back and seat, mounted on a tubular metal frame; this design became a prototype for much mass – production seating of the 1950s and ‘60s.
The Eames’ most famous later design was a luxurious leather-covered reclining armchair with a matching molded ottoman. For their house (1949) in Santa Monica (California) they designed practical prefabricated elements – doors, windows and walls – with which they hoped to to popularise the construction of well design mass –production housing.