Today’s clue in our “Everywhere in Your Day” Contest takes its inspiration from the continual design journey of Charles and Ray Eames. For these designers, everything was a process and an exploration. And when they married and began working together in the 1940s, part of their journey involved exploring seating solutions crafted from one piece of material — a curved, single-shell form in which the seat and back are one. Read more
Charles and Ray Eames saw design as an ongoing journey — a process that delights in exploration and insight, and embraces updates and improvements. In the 1940s, this philosophy led the duo to the evolve their techniques for molding plywood into a design that solved problems through plastic: their now-classic Eames Molded Plastic Chair.
Charles and architect Eero Saarinen, and then Charles and Ray together, had experimented with a single-shell form for several years before Charles and Ray submitted a design in stamped metal in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1948 “International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design.” Their entry received second place. Its heavy, neoprene-coated form proved costly to produce, however, so Charles and Ray turned their attention to something new: plastic. They soon found that the exciting material could mold into organic shapes and comfortably conform to the body, allowing their design to do more with less. Read more