Living and Working in the Eames Home
Charles plays with a new toy design while Ray looks on from a balcony inside the Eames House.
The Eames home in Pacific Palisades, California, is more than a modern architectural icon. It is a compelling intersection between nature and industry, beauty and utility, life and work.
Situated on the edge of a meadow, the home is at once whimsical and spare. The sleek exterior, constructed from prefabricated, off-the-shelf materials, is a geometric grid of steel and glass, punctuated by pops of bold, primary color.
When the Eameses lived in the home, their life and work converged in the artifacts that populated the interior. Ray Eames had a knack for turning clutter into art. She created visual tableaus by juxtaposing knick-knacks, toys, flowers, and other found objects. Books, paintings, and projects from the Eames Office also lived in the home.
In their blurring of work and life, Charles and Ray Eames were precursors of twenty-first century workers, who need Venn diagrams to map the complex overlaps between life and work. For Charles and Ray Eames, turning these overlaps into artful living was a matter of course.