Eames Obsessives Have a New Mecca to Explore

Titans in the history of American design, Ray and Charles Eames taught us that "everything eventually connects." Their pragmatic view of design—Charles called it "a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose" in the short 1972 film Design Q&A—and relentless curiosity produced a prolific body of work spanning not just furniture and architecture, but also medical equipment, films, graphics, textiles, and exhibits. Core to the couple’s genius was their ability to find connection and order through play and experimentation. In the same interview mentioned above, Charles refuses to separate utility and enjoyment: "Who would say that pleasure is not useful?"

It’s fitting, then, that the new nonprofit organization formed by their granddaughter, Llisa Demetrios, is named the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. Led by chief curator Demetrios and president and CEO John Cary, the Institute hopes to equip today’s designers and leaders with the tools to tackle contemporary problems by bringing to life an expansive archive of Eames ephemera that the family acquired from the designers’ legendary office in Venice, California, in 2019.

The Eames Collection contains tens of thousands of objects, from handmade prototypes to toy tin cars, and swatches of marbled paper to watch faces. Each object will be meticulously catalogued, documented, restored, and made available to the public for the first time, in the hopes that they will spark new connections and discoveries that recall Ray and Charles’ own exploratory process.

Industrial designer and cofounder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, provided seed funding for the Institute, which launched this spring. A long-time Eames enthusiast, he had gotten to know the family through visits to the Eames Ranch in Petaluma, California, a working farm purchased by Lucia Eames, Charles’ daughter and Demetrio’s mother, in 1992. That year, Lucia commissioned William Turnbull, one of the architects who envisioned the Sea Ranch—a master-planned community on the coast in Sonoma County—to build a barn-inspired home and workshop. Here, on the land’s rolling green pastures, is where Demetrios grew up and subsequently raised her two sons. Now undergoing renovations to achieve net-zero carbon and water use, the Eames Ranch continues to serve as a "living laboratory," in the words of the Institute, which operates out of the compound. 

Talks of forming the Institute first began when Lucia died in 2014. Gebbia, who had also brought Airbnb designers to the Ranch for inspiration, was determined to help continue its legacy. "After many conversations with the family, where we built a strong and trusting relationship, the idea of the Eames Institute—a destination to inspire and unite individuals and organizations advancing design with purpose, stewarded by their granddaughter Llisa—was born," he writes in a blog post for the Institute.

The Institute is independent of the Eames Office, founded by Ray and Charles in 1941, and the Eames Foundation, which was established in 2004 to steward the Eames House in Los Angeles, but the organizations work toward a common goal.

"The Eames Institute will add a new facet to the network of organizations passionate about the Eameses’ work, and strengthen everyone’s overarching mission of preserving and sharing Charles and Ray's creative legacy," says Eames Demetrios, director of the Eames Office and chairman of the board of the Eames Foundation, in a press release.

"Being able to share the legacy of Ray and Charles in this way, to showcase their incredible process and wide-angled vision of design, is the dream of a lifetime," says Demetrios. "I hope the Institute’s efforts will help people find inspiration for solving problems in their own world."

The work, as they say, is cut out for them. There are still hundreds of unopened boxes, most of them in storage facilities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. "There’s much unfound treasure yet to come," says Demetrios, alluding to the endeavor’s Christmas-morning element. "A box might have one object in it, or it can have 40." As the Institute continues its mission, it will offer a growing number of online exhibits, starting with those tracing Ray and Charles’ parallel childhoods, their innovations with molded plywood during World War II, and the formation of the iconic Shell Chair.

For the NYCxDESIGN festival, the Institute teamed up with Brooklyn-based agency Standard Issue Design to create window displays at the flagship Herman Miller store in New York City’s Flatiron District. On view through May 22, the installation also includes a sample of the Eames Collection on the first floor—visitors will find gems such as an itinerary for Ray’s trip to the city (including the addresses of friends and luminaries like George Nelson and Isamu Noguchi), news clippings featuring Charles’ watercolor paintings done in Mexico, and flat-pack furniture assembly instructions. 

In jotting down notes of advice to his students, Charles wrote in January 1949, "The art is not something you apply to your work / The art is the way you do your work, a result of your attitude towards it." Similarly, the gradual unfolding of the Eames Institute as it excavates the Eames Collection and develops new programming is a study and celebration of the creative process so integral to the future of design.

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