Architecture & design
Charles Eames
1907–1978 · designer, architect, filmmaker
American designer who came to Cranbrook in 1938, began his furniture experiments there with Eero Saarinen and met his partner Ray Kaiser.
- Born
St. Louis, Missouri- Died
St. Louis, Missouri
aged 71- Birth name
- Charles Ormond Eames Jr.
- Detroit years
- 1938–1941
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Eames was a young St. Louis architect when Eliel Saarinen invited him to Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, and in 1938 he moved there with his first wife and daughter on a fellowship to study architecture. Within a year he was teaching and heading the academy's new industrial design department. At Cranbrook he teamed up with Eero Saarinen on molded-plywood seating that won the Museum of Modern Art's Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in 1940, the seed of the chairs that later made the Eames name famous. It was also at Cranbrook that he met Ray Kaiser, a student who helped draw and model the competition entries. They married in 1941 and left Michigan for Los Angeles, where the Eames Office went on to produce the Lounge Chair, the plastic shell chairs and the film Powers of Ten. Michigan remained part of the story: Herman Miller of Zeeland manufactured their furniture for decades.
Highlights
- Cranbrook fellow from 1938, then head of its industrial design department
- Won MoMA's Organic Design competition with Eero Saarinen (1940)
- Met and married fellow Cranbrook student Ray Kaiser (1941)
- Eames Lounge Chair (1956) produced by Michigan's Herman Miller
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1938–1941
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Where he studied architecture on a fellowship, taught industrial design and developed his first molded-plywood furniture.