#8: THE EAMES Rossana Diaz
ABOUT CASE PROGRAM THE EAMES TABLE OF CONTENTS FORMAL APPEARANCE PARTI DESCRIPTION GROUND AND FIRST SPATIAL QUALITIES CASE no. 8 SITE PLAN AXONOMETRIC EXTERIOR ELEVATIONS FLOOR PLANS GROUND AND FIRST DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS PROGRAM CONCLUSION FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS CIRCULATION REFERENCES
PROGRAM The Case Study Houses were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, which commissioned major architects of the day, including Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, and Ralph Rapson to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes for the United States residential housing boom caused by the end of World War II and the return of millions of soldiers.
THE EAMES RAY + CHARLES Charles and Ray Eames have been placed among the most important American designers of the 20 th century. Their contributions to architecture, interior and product design were simply groundbreaking, and they still shape the way we see the world today. Both coming from a design and art background, played a huge part in the Case House Study.
1940 Charles and Ray met at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Charles as a teacher and Ray as a student. 1941 The two married at a friends apartment in Chicago. The newlyweds moved to Los Angeles to begin their life and career together. 1945 35 houses were designed with 24 of them being built. The original design for Case Study House #8 was rethought after Charles and Ray fell in love with the meadow on which the house was to be built. 1949 The Eames were at the forefront of the post-war Modernist movement in the United States, and did more than any other individuals to bring American modernism to the rest of the world.
The Eames' proposal for the Case Study House No. 8 reflected their own household and their own needs. They were a young married couple and they needed a place to live, work and entertain all in one. They wanted a place in harmony with the site.
The property sits on a lower plateau on the northern edge of the Santa Monica Canyon. Because of the geographical area, the Eames did not want to give up the beauty of the landscape. The home is located along the Pacific Coast between Santa Monica and Malibu.
The home sits on a 1.4 acre lot in the Pacific Palisades. The residential portion accounts for 1,500 square feet of the home, while the studio makes up the remaining 1,000 square feet.. There is a grid of 7 ft.-4 in divided horizontally throughout the entire house. Vertically, the grid is 6 ft.-10 in. The program outlined the integration of outdoor and indoor living spaces and the application of the techniques of mass production. It creates a unique design by using prefabricated, standard, and off-the-shelf parts, promoting Modernism through simple form, and trying to avoid referencing any historical styles. PROGRAM
The primary colors show the childlike playfulness of the Eames while still being sophisticated. The house adapts instead of having to be adapted to; many parts of the house are movable, aside from the steel frames. The house itself is designed to follow a human living pattern. Panels resembling Mondrian paintings were attached to the prefabricated materials within the house. At the same time, they were influenced by a Japanese theme, placed strategically in order to allow light to flow in to the house, and the trees in front allow for shade to help keep the inside cooler. FORMAL APPEARANCE
SPATIAL QUALITIES The house is divided into two rectangular sections which create a residential area and as well as a studio area. The two separate areas of the home are connected with the use of a courtyard, which helps connect the designers wishes. The interior of the home also connects these two seemingly separate spaces through the use of double height ceilings. The Eames designed a very open and flow-through floor plan. Rooms are placed strategically so that it makes ergonomic sense, for example a kitchen that opens to a dining room, making the process of serving dinner faster and easier.
HOW IS IT MADE? The materials within the home serve to emphasize the landscape, through the use of wood, and glass. The walls that face the rear of the house have a tendency to be solid, which allows for a greater amount of privacy within the home.
STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS Smaller interior spaces, like the upstairs bathrooms and bedrooms, have well placed glazed panels that provide light without compromising privacy. The design of the house as a whole reflects space, light, and flexibility. On the interior, doubleheight, glass-paneled spaces occupy the outermost portions of each component. That creates alternating positive and negative spaces.
The Eames Case Study House #8 was constructed with the use of materials and techniques that resulted from the experiences of the Second World War. The house main materials were concrete (for the foundation); glass, stucco, wood, asbestos, metal, and synthetics for the walls); asphalt (for the roof); and metal through the use of a steel frame. MATERIALS The rear elevation vertical members are partially embedded into an 8 ft. high poured concrete columns. Steel decking forms the underside of the roof, which is flat, and runs perpendicular to the frames. On the exterior of the home, there is a visible diagonal cross-bracing, providing structural stability.
Exposed steel frames, steelsashes, sub-dividers, and plaster panels are all painted in black, white, beige, red, or blue. There was a mixture of transparent and translucent glass used throughout the home, while the area in the studio used reinforced glass. Each bay within the home is also infilled with materials, such as plaster, plywood, asbestos, glass, and pylon.
There is a rhythm between double height and single height spaces, creating public and private spaces within the living area and the studio, but not strictly. CASE
Is it SUSTAINABLE? Ray and Charles Eames worked with the site in order to incorporate the existing landscape and natural greenery that was already on the property. The inclusion of glass surfaces allowed for much more natural light than most homes, which in turn, allowed for a lower energy cost. The overall cost was approximately $1 per square foot (or about $10 per square foot today $1.50 less than the average home price in 1949). They accomplished this remarkably low cost by using relatively inexpensive, sustainable, prefabricated materials, and compartmentalizing the design in order to simplify construction.
CONCLUSION The Eames House incorporates real life issues and architectural world. The construction of the house offers an iconographic structure that has attracted large number of people. This is based on the appeal and the charm that the House offers as it tries to explain architectural pattern. The Eames House is considered the most modern way to provide solutions to the ever growing demand for urban housing.
REFERENCES SOURCES http://www.archdaily.com/66302/ad -classics-eames-house-charlesand-ray-eames http://eameshouseresearch.weebly.com/blog http://www.eamesfoundation.org http://www.nps.gov/nhl/find/statelist s/ca/eames.pdf http://www.eamesfoundation.org/e ames-house-history/ IMAGE CREDITS http://archiclassic.tumblr.com/po st/81574955982/eames-housecase-study-house-8 http://www.bdonline.co.uk/chriswilliamsons-inspiration-eameshouse-los-angelescalifornia/5074841.article https://objectspacebuildingplace. wordpress.com/2015/08/19/eam es-case-study-house-no-8/ http://www.eamesfoundation.org/ http://eamesdesigns.com