Manijeh: October 2010 Archives
(a review by Alice Rawsthorn in the New York Times - 24 Oct 2010)
The Story of
Eames Furniture Let's start with a
good old-fashioned design book, the whopping two-volume "Story of Eames
Furniture" by Marilyn Neuhart, an American designer whose husband, John, worked
at the Eames Office. She bills it as both "a good solid story filled with good,
interesting, hard-working characters," and a "warts-and-all-story" that debunks
the myths of Charles Eames as a "two-dimensional cardboard hero"
and his wife, Ray, as "a feminist heroine." Ms. Neuhart's bluntness (she describes
working with Ray Eames on an earlier book as "one of the most
agonizing experiences of my professional life") makes for a rollicking tale
that includes Charles's womanizing, the irritating indecisiveness of both
Eameses and their shameless deletion of inconvenient facts from his biography. The result is a design geek's dream. Packed
with information and insights on the development of every piece of furniture
produced by the Eames Office, it is filled with product shots, technical
drawings, advertisements, magazine and newspaper clippings, snapshots, profiles
of the Eames's collaborators and employees, and anecdotes. Take the time that
Charles Eames took his friend and fellow designer Eero Saarinen to a drive-in movie theater to see Judy Garland and
Mickey Rooney in
the 1940 film "Strike Up the Band." As Saarinen said to him afterward: "Those
two youngsters might just go somewhere." The Story of Eames Furniture is sold on Amazon for £122.33
Using this initial fictional brief, I hope to develop a set of guidelines for inhabitation based on Charles and Ray's documentation of their house.
I think this competition, through the design of the brief and its constraints as well as the various entries; will be a way to make the Eames House more about my own narrative. In this way, I can discuss themes of lifestyle, inhabitation, self-promotion/ advertising and the power of the image - all of which were my main interests when studying the Eames House.
I will also develop a list of celebrity couples but any suggestions are welcome. So far the couples I have thought of are: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (for an interesting postmodern approach), David and Victoria Beckham (for unabashed self-promotion) and Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson (for their combination as art collector and 'domestic goddess')
