News: Fashion boutique features an Eames bird above the entrance

An Eames House Bird stands guard on the porch of this tiny yellow building in Seoul, which has been adapted by Nordic Bros Design Community to house a fashion boutique.
The shop occupies a former house in the Korean capital's Yeonhee-dong neighbourhood. The client asked local studio Nordic Bros Design Community to renovate the building after being impressed by a Scandinavian-inspired cafe designed by the studio elsewhere in the city.

(24 april 2015)

Read all at: http://www.dezeen.com/2015/04/24/nordic-bros-design-community-north-gate-salon-stylised-residential-details-yellow-seoul-south-korea-boutique/

Cortesy dezeen.com

News: an interview with Daniel Ostroff author of "An Eames Anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and Speeches,"

Eames scholar Daniel Ostroff has compiled an anthology of design couple Charles and Ray Eames' written output -- articles, film scripts, interviews, letters, notes and speeches -- from 1941 to 1986. 

The book is illustrated with rarely seen drawings and photographs, and about 70% of the collected texts are previously unpublished, Ostroff notes. "They were as careful with their words as they were with their designs and very good at coming up with one-liners, such as 'Take your pleasure seriously.'"

Read all at http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-ostroff-20150425-story.html

Courtesy Los Angelse Times

A Virtual Tour Into The Eames House

The Eames Case Study House #8, usually known simply as Eames’ House, is usually presented as a kind of kaleidoscope of details. It remains one of the most exuberantly performative homes in the history of architecture, with its resident designers, Charles and Ray Eames, as the chief actors. They enacted the day-to-day as an ongoing celebration, documenting the daily rituals of work, play, and hospitality with photography and film. What this theatre of life conceals is that the Eames’ house was itself, structurally, a kind of theatre. Examining the house as an interactive 3D model holds, for this reason, some revelations even for those for whom the house looks as familiar as an old friend.

Courtesy ArchDaily.com
April 17, 2105

Try the Virtual Reality Model at: http://www.archdaily.com/tag/virtual-reality/

News: Jean Arthur Madelaine (head of Interior Design of Citroën) inspired by Eames

"In Citroën, the work on the design concerns the brand in general, even though each model will have its recognizability ," says Jean Arthur Madelaine , head of Design interior of Citroën. 

To design the seats 'Sofa' of Cactus (see above) and dashboard minimal lines was inspired by the world of furniture: "I tried to get out of the narrow range of cars . I took as a reference the furniture of Charles Eames: clean lines, basic, comfortable".
Wednesday, 15 April 2015

Courtesy. corriere.it

http://motori.corriere.it/motori/attualita/15_aprile_15/cactus-manifesto-stile-citroen-b8dcd86c-e374-11e4-8e3e-4cd376ffaba3.shtml

News: Weston Williamson founding partner Chris Williamson on the building that has everything

The Eames House has got everything I love about architecture – rigour and thoroughness but also playfulness and colour, with everything beautifully detailed. As one of the Case Study Houses it typified an era of invention and excellence in modern domestic architecture. It’s an incredibly inspiring building.
I first went to see it in 1980 after working in New York for Welton Becket and before returning to London to work for Michael Hopkins. I had visited other Case Study Houses and those of Frank Lloyd Wright but the elegance and simplicity of the Eames House was stunning, and one of the many highlights of my time in America.
I already knew quite a bit about the house before visiting because I’d read Andrew Weston’s diploma dissertation on it. But it was still fantastic to see it in reality. Ray was still living there and anyone could just turn up, wander around outside and go into the downstairs workshop.

It’s a demonstration house, as much as anything else, to show just how much you can do with industrial system building - you can design a very rational building constructed using industrial materials but still create something interesting with Mondrian colours and double-height spaces. The spatial variety within the Eames House is an inspiration.
The other thing I love about the house is the way it relates to the landscape. The tall eucalyptus trees are as elegantly beautiful as the house itself and the two complement each other. The amazing thing is that the original plans show that this was not the original intention – it was only during the time that the industrial components were ordered from the catalogue and were delivered that Charles and Ray fell in love with the meadow and decided to reconfigure and build the house further back to preserve it.

I’d love to build something like this but it’s virtually impossible to find a similar site in London where you could do something that modern. What’s really nice about the Eames House is its lightness of structure, which would be very difficult to achieve using modern levels of insulation. Instead of using single-glazing and SIP insulated panels like Eames did, you’d have to have a completely different design philosophy and the house would turn out quite differently.
But I’m sure that if the Eameses and those other Case Study architects were around today they’d be doing something really innovative with sustainability.
When I returned to London after my time in America it was fantastic to work in Michael and Patty Hopkins’ home/office, which was a contextual interpretation along similar industrial lines to the Eames House using Metsec beams and built in a similar sort of leafy setting. Both houses are stunning and have been an inspiration for our 30 years at Weston Williamson.
I have been back three times since, and it’s stood the test of time really well. It’s the sort of place that’s just good to come back to again and again. To me it represents a particular time of hope and optimism in the future. New materials, new ways of thinking and living and new ideas. It inspired a generation.

Wednesday, 15 April 2015
Courtsesy: bdonline.co.uk

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/chris-williamsons-inspiration-eames-house-los-angeles-california/5074841.article

News: Milan Design Week: tomes at Taschen’s new outpost in the corso Magenta district (Thursday, April 16)

The Taschen store will open today with an exhibition by Julius Shulman. He captured Los Angeles and its surroundings in the middle of the 20th century and photographed virtually every important mid-century modernist architect’s work, including the home of Charles and Ray Eames. 

His pictures have such a strong signature and really capture the atmosphere of his subject’s homes. Some of his prints will be for sale in-store, too. 

On Thursday, April 16, I plan to celebrate its official unveiling with a cocktail party hosted by Marc Newson.

Taschen, Via Meravagli, 17
Courtesy taschen.com

Shaker: a more modern iteration by Charles Eames. A book.

"Beginning in Manchester, England, around 1750 and declining with the American Civil War in 1865, the Shakers had a profound influence on Scandinavian furniture, a popular aesthetic that continues to this day. A Protestant Christian religious society that thrived in the 1800s, the Shakers’ beliefs in leading a pure and simple life coupled with their practice of medicine, technological innovation, art, and design led to a tradition of craftsmanship that continues. The iconic Shaker ladder-back chair was a popular item that was widely copied in the late 1800s; while the influence of a rocking settee circa 1890 can be seen in a more modern iteration by Charles Eames. They cleverly designed wardrobes with interior pegs for hanging clothes; chests of drawers with built-in trunks, or legs high enough that one may store baskets underneath; put beds on rollers so they could easily be pulled away from the wall to give access for those making the beds; and other furniture created with the users in mind. The book celebrates the timelessness of Shaker furniture, and explores the influence on contemporary designers’ reinterpretations of its purity and simplicity."

From the catalogue "Assouline 2015".

Shaker: Function, Purity, Perfection, David Stocks, Jerry Grant, and Sir Terence Conran, Assouline, 144 pages, $50

Why The World Is Obsessed With Midcentury Modern Design

Today, more than ever, the midcentury modern look is everywhere. DVRs are set to capture Mad Men's final season playing out on AMC. Flip through the April issue ofElle Décor, and you'll find that more than half of the featured homes prominently include midcentury furniture pieces. Turn on The Daily Show and you'll see the guests sitting in classic Knoll office chairs. If you dine in a contemporary restaurant tonight, there's a good chance you'll be seated in a chair that was designed in the 1950s—whether it is an Eames, Bertoia, Cherner, or Saarinen. A few years back, you could stamp your mail with an Eames postage stamp.
Meanwhile, type the words "midcentury" and "modern" into any furniture retailer's search pane, and you'll likely come up with dozens of pieces labeled with these design-world buzzwords—despite the fact that there is nothing "midcentury" about the items they describe. Over the past two decades, a term describing a specific period of design has become the marketing descriptor du jour.
"Midcentury modern" itself is a difficult term to define. It broadly describes architecture, furniture, and graphic design from the middle of the 20th century (roughly 1933 to 1965, though some would argue the period is specifically limited to 1947 to 1957). The timeframe is a modifier for the larger modernist movement, which has roots in the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century and also in the post-World War I period.
Author Cara Greenberg coined the phrase "midcentury modern" as the title for her 1984 book, Midcentury Modern: Furniture of the 1950s. In 1983, Greenberg had written a piece for Metropolitan Home about 1950s furniture, and an editor at Crown urged her to write a book on the topic. As for the phrase "midcentury modern," Greenberg "just made that up as the book's title," she says. A New York Times review of the book acknowledged that Greenberg's tome hit on a trend. "Some love it and others simply can't stand it, but there is no denying that the 50's are back in vogue again. Cara Greenberg, the author of 'Mid- Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950's' ($30, Harmony Books) manages to convey the verve, imagination and the occasional pure zaniness of the period." The book was an immediate hit, selling more than 100,000 copies, and once "midcentury modern" entered the lexicon, the phrase was quickly adopted by both the design world and the mainstream.
The popularity of midcentury modern design today has roots at the time of Greenberg's book. Most of the designs of the midcentury had gone out of fashion by the late 60s, but in the early- to mid-eighties, interest in the period began to return. Within a decade, vintage midcentury designs were increasingly popular, and several events helped to boost midcentury modern's appeal from a niche group of design enthusiasts into the mainstream.
By the mid-90s, a niche market of collectors had already driven up prices of the original midcentury designs. A New York Times article notes that an original Eames molded plywood folding screen, which had been out of production, was worth as much as $10,000 in 1994. In December 1999, a George Nelson Marshmallow sofa sold for an unprecedented $66,000. A year later, two George Nelson "pretzel" armchairs sold for just over $2,500 apiece, while a 1965 George Nakashima cabinet sold for $20,700.

to be continue at: http://curbed.com/archives/2015/04/08/why-everyone-is-obsessed-with-midcentury-modern-design.php

above: Charles and Ray Eames and Herman Miller pieces. 

Image courtesy Herman Miller

Some Things You May Not Know About The Time-Life Building, Where Mad Men Is Set.

Since Mad Men entered season 4, Sterling Cooper & Partners (née Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) has been located in Suite 3750 of the Time & Life Building. The group moved in at the end of 1964, about five years after the building opened in real life. The building serves mostly as a backdrop, but bits of its history pop out here and there—for example, the chairs in the office are the Time-Life Chairs, designed specifically for that building. More on that, along with some other real life facts about the building, below.
The chairs that were originally on every executive floor of the building were designed by Charles Eames, and manufactured by Herman Miller. They have become known as the Time-Life Chairs. In 1959, Eames asked Time-Life chairman Henry Luce "for photographs from the Time-Life archive to be used in a slideshow he was creating for the U.S. pavilion at the Moscow World Exhibition. Luce agreed, as long as Eames promised to return the favor one day. The following year, Eames made good on that promise, and 50 years later, the world is still enjoying the results of that arrangement."
These are the chairs you'll see in the Mad Men conference rooms, for the most part (Don had a different chair in his office). They are still in production, though a fifth leg has been added.

Courtesy: gothamist.com

Read all at: http://gothamist.com/2015/04/01/mad_men_building_secrets_revealed.php

Real or copycat: The thorny issue of authenticity in design.

We like to share an interesting essay about authenticity or copy in industrial design, by Nathalie Atkinsons; just an extract:

/.../ The Eames chair is now in the vernacular of design vocabulary. Consumers can buy derivatives of the archetype from a variety of sources. The chair costs $69 at Structube, while at Kitchen Stuff Plus it’s on sale for $39.99. Versions with the licensed Eames name attached are about $400. Are the cheaper ones infringements on a designer? Which to buy without guilt? /.../

Read all at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/decor/real-or-copycat-consumers-battle-authenticity-in-design/article23741602/

Courtesy image: Kevin Spencer

No limits ! A Vibrator You Wear Around Your Neck

Eyeglasses. Pens. It's a time-honored tradition to hang things you're likely to lose around your neck. And while that list doesn't generally include sex toys, there's no reason it can't: Meet the Vesper, a beautiful plated vibrator that you can wear like a necklace.
The Vesper is a sleek stainless steel pendant that vibrates when you hit a button. In looks, it appears more like a vial you wear around your neck than a sex toy. And though vaguely phallic in shape, the Vesper is for external use only.

Waterproof, USB rechargable, and available in three colors including silver, rose, and 24 karat gold, the Vesper will start shipping in September. You can even get your Vesper engraved with custom text: The vibrator's makers suggest Charles Eames's famous quote, "Take your pleasure seriously."
The Vesper is designed by Crave, a San Francisco based company that believes that sex toys should be as beautifully designed as any other object we are intimate with—mentally and physically—in our lives. Crave wants to make the humble vibrator every bit as acceptable a piece of tech to wear in public as a FitBit, Nike+ Fuelband, or—at worst!—Google Glass.

"Many have created a vibrator that fails as quality jewelry or a gimmicky pendant with underwhelming vibration," Crave writes. We've made sure that Vesper can truly do both in the most elegant and considered way. We believe that you can have it all."
In a world in which sex toys are all too often look like floppy jellyfish or relics of 1980s Soviet engineering, that's a laudable enough goal. But putting a Charles Eames quote on the side of a vibrator you wear around your neck might be taking things a bit far.

Courtesy: Fastcodesign.com

Read all at: www.fastcodesign.com/3034063/the-vesper-is-a-vibrator-you-wear-around-your-neck

News: Bryn Smith about Eames House

Today, we want to remark an interesting witness by Bryn Smith (march 25, 2015, on eyeondesign.aiga.org) about visiting today the Eames House in Venice (Ca); just a quote: "A rite of passage for any design-minded local or visiting practitioner, a trip to the Eames House, nestled on a winding hillside just above the Santa Monica Bay, will cost you $10 and the better part of an afternoon. What you get in return—beyond a glimpse inside Case Study House #8—is a view into the life, work, and playful imagination behind one of modernism’s most famous partnerships (and a bright orange flyer you can take home)".

Courtesy: eyeondesign.aiga.org
Read all at: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/graphic-design-in-the-wild-a-visit-to-the-eames-case-study-house-perfect-flyer-included/

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