Eames Demetrios is the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, the great American designers who, as the Washington Post once said, changed how the 20th century sat down. Time magazine called their Lounge Chair Wood (known simply as LCW), designed in 1945, the 'chair of the century'. Their leather-and-ply Lounge chair, with its matching footstool, is more in demand today than it ever was during the couple's lifetime and, like most of their furniture, is still in production, with Herman Miller in America and Vitra in Europe. Charles died in 1978 and Ray 10 years to the day after her husband, on 21 August 1988. But the couple's spirit and work lives on. When Demetrios gave a talk in Japan last year, he was greeted by the sort of fans that you would normally associate with a rock band. If 10 per cent of them had been over the age of 25, he says, he would be surprised.
This week, Demetrios is in London to give a talk and sign his new book, An Eames Primer (£15.95, Thames & Hudson). He then travels to Lisbon to attend the opening of an exhibition at the Gulbenkian Foundation, inspired by the Eames's work on their 70s film project, Powers of Ten , which explores scale. The film begins with an aerial shot of a picnic (a favourite Eames activity) and zooms both out into space and back again to look as closely at the cells of the picnickers' skins. Demetrios tailors the idea to fit in with different locations. The Lisbon exhibition runs simultaneously with another in San Francisco.
Demetrios's earliest memory of his grandparents is the teddy bear they gave him as a boy. 'Time with them was wonderful,' he writes. 'Charles and I had a special connection, which probably evolved from my fascination with film... Our grandparents were not icons of design but simply our grandparents - we called them "Charlie and Ray".' He was 16 when Charles died, but felt well equipped to pursue his interest in making films and documentaries.
Seven years ago he began exploring the possibilities of combining his own work with that of his grandparents'. Powers of Ten Interactive is a CD-ROM based on the original film from the 70s. 'It was the first time I tried to merge my own interest with the Eames Office and it worked out kind of great,' he says. 'I realised that there were a lot of things I knew I really wanted to share - it was important for someone to take charge of communicating these ideas in a responsible way.'
He began interviewing friends and associates of Charles and Ray, which inevitably led to him writing An Eames Primer. 'Clearly one could write forever about them. I wanted to make a book that you could read on the subway for a week or so. I didn't want to do another coffee-table book. At this point in time what was really needed was somebody to pull together the ideas, the connections between all the different works that they did.'
As important, if not more important, than any one particular design, however, was the philosophy and design process they developed within the studio at 901 Washington Boulevard, where they worked together for more than 30 years. There they pursued the holy grail of designing the perfect chair made from a single shell. Along the way, they developed other ideas and philosophies, made films, set up exhibitions, took photographs, and made as many connections between the worlds of art, science, mathematics and design as they could find. Demetrios remembers visiting: 'Their office was just a magical world. You could picnic there, watch movies, watch people making stuff, hang out with them. It was just great.'
The studio seems to have been more like a playground than a workplace. '"901" (as it was generally known),' writes Demetrios, 'was very unspectacular from the outside - nothing but an old bus garage. But inside there was a complete, fully functioning workshop, separate black-and-white and colour photo labs, a film shooting stage, archives and archivists, production areas, flexible spaces, a kitchen, a dining area, picnic area, projection room, screening room, spectacular library, aquariums, and more.' As one of the designers who worked there comments: '901 was Charles's instrument - and he knew exactly how to play it.' Everything that could be was done inside those walls.
Following the Eames's penchant for flipbooks (if work wasn't fun, it seems, it wasn't worth doing), a visit to 901 is recorded in a tiny 2cm corner of An Eames Primer . As you flick through the pages, the reader is taken on a tour through the space, complete with prototype furniture, library, American flag hanging on a wall, tools, books, paintings and general clutter. It was not a slick, glamorous office. It was functional, providing the Eameses and their team with everything they needed - from cameras to film-editing equipment - to be as creative as they could be. There was little daylight in the place, but time ran at its own pace inside. Designers and technicians were often required to work well into the night if a project required it; 4am was not unknown.
As well as 901, the Eameses built their own home, part of the Case Study House Program announced by the couple's friend and editor of Arts & Architecture magazine, John Entenza. Eight architects were invited to take part, to design eight houses that would offer a learning experience for society in general to draw from - houses that might inspire a future generation of architects and developers. The eight architects included Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, and Charles Eames. Over the years, the project expanded, and more case studies were commissioned. A total of 24 out of 35 designs were eventually built. This week another book, Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program 1945-1966 is published by Taschen - it's a huge coffee-table (make that a banqueting-table) book, which analyses each of the houses in chronological order, with plans, sketches and glorious photographs.
Case Study #8 is the Eames House. It was built on a parcel of land, bought by Entenza, in Pacific Palisades. It was a beautiful spot, with eucalyptus trees and ocean views. Eames designed the house in conjunction with Saarinen, and one of the aims was to build a modern house that did not interfere with the area's natural beauty. The Eames's brief to themselves was to build a house for a couple with grown children to live and work in - an idea so ahead of its time that property developers are touting it as new and innovative almost 70 years later. It was to be made from prefabricated parts. Once everything had been delivered, however, they realised that they were spoiling a beauty spot by building on top of it, and changed the design. The house that was eventually built was designed by Charles and Ray.
There is a photograph of Charles and Ray in their completed home taken in 1950, not long after they had moved in. Charles's camera is perched on a tripod, and the couple is reflected in the huge glass window. The living room is an airy, open space, with abstract paintings on the wall, simple Japanese matting on the floor, and a couple of their chair designs looking as elegant and organic as the rubber and Swiss-cheese plants growing from their pots on the floor. The place looks modern now; in 1950, it must have looked positively space age.
By the 60s the interior of the Eames House had reached the peak of its modernist aesthetic, complete with an ever-changing array of examples of folk art and objects collected on their travels - a style that was (and still is) to influence homes for decades to come. 'It reached a point visually in the 60s when it looked pretty much the same from then on,' says Demetrios, talking on the phone from the house, where he now runs the Eames Office. 'The house part we pretty much kept as it was when Charles and Ray were alive.'
He and his wife live 10 minutes away, but his mother, Lucia Eames, lives in it when she is in LA. It still operates as the family home, although not such a private one. There is a constant string of visitors wanting to have a look at the house, and in the true spirit of both the Eameses - and the case study program - there is usually someone (often Demetrios himself) on hand to give a guided tour. Needless to say, people are asked to make an appointment.
Demetrios runs the Eames Office from the studio at the house. In the 80s, 901 was on the verge of being condemned, for earthquake reasons, when Ray died, and Lucia Eames was given six months to empty the building for work to be carried out. Ray asked that rather than put everything back again, the building be sold to pay the taxes on the Eames House. Complete rooms from 901 were given to three institutions: Charles's office is on loan to Vitra International in Germany; the projection and conference room are at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the front office is at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The Eames spirit remains very much alive at the house.'Running the Eames Office is pretty fun, I have to say,' says Demetrios. 'Our mission statement is communicating, preserving and extending.' His day-to-day work involves dealing with licensing rights, helping run the gallery, and organising and writing exhibitions like the Lisbon/San Francisco project.
'There is no question that people enter the Eames world through the door of their furniture, but what is even more important than all that is the Eames philosophy and how they approached the problems,' says Demetrios. 'I hope that my book will open that up to people. It's important as we go into the next century that people can take these ideas - the underlying processes - and bring them to their own place. The processes are open to anybody.'
· Eames Demetrios will be signing books on 15 February from 12.30pm to 2.30pm, and giving a talk at 1pm, at the Vitra Showroom, 30 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 (020 7608 6200). Admission free. To make an appointment to view the Eames House, or to find out more, go to www.eamesoffice.com.
