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The Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, is a landmark of mid-20th century modern architecture located in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. It was designed and constructed in 1949 by husband-and-wife Charles and Ray Eames to serve as their home and studio. They lived in their home until their deaths: Charles in 1978 and Ray, ten years to the day, in 1988.

Charles described the house as unselfconscious . There is a sense of that “way-it-should-be-ness”. Charles and Ray designed a house specifically to meet their needs, but they were those universal needs that we all share as humans. They believed in the honest use of materials and straightforward connections. The details WERE the product!

And then by nestling the house into the hillside, rather than imposing it on the site, they realized their original intent: for the house in nature to serve as a re-orientor. The scent, the sound of birds, the shadow of the trees against the structure whether inside or out, the openness of the site—all the elements join seamlessly.

Charles said, “Just as a good host tries to anticipate the needs of his guest, so a good architect or a designer or a city planner tries to anticipate the needs of those who will live in or use the thing being designed.”

Come visit and explore how the house exemplifies many of the themes of the Eameses’ work: from furniture to exhibitions, the guest/host relationship, the iterative process that leads to meeting the need, the importance of the direct experience, the relation with nature, the life in work and work in life, the importance of details, and more. Together the structure, collections, and landscape tell the story of the couple’s approach to life and work.

The Eames House consists of two glass and steel rectangular boxes: one is a residence; one, a working studio, exploring process, materiality and color.

The Eameses looked at life as being an act of design. The residence is filled with the “stuff” of their living: the stuff that tells the story of their lives, interests and loves.

The Eames House structure and its contents are often the focus of attention, but the landscape is critical to their understanding. As Charles said, “Eventually everything connects”.

Help us share the Eameses’ joy and rigor with future visitors, so they may have a direct experience of Charles and Ray’s approach to life and work.

• INSPIRATION

The Eames House: A Deep Dive into Case Study House 8

Nestled in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles stands the Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8. It is more than just a work of mid-century modern architecture; it’s an enduring testament to the design sensibilities and philosophies of Charles and Ray Eames, the husband-and-wife team who not only designed it but also called it home. Built in 1949, this iconic structure encapsulates the couple’s holistic approach to design and life.

Eames House Technical Information

• Architects: Ray and Charles Eames
• Location: 203 North Chautauqua Boulevard, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles , USA
• Topics: Mid-Century Modern
• Area: 1,500 ft 2 |  140  m 2
• Project Year: 1945 – 1949
• Photographs: © Eames Office, See Captions

The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests.  – Charles and Ray Eames 1-2

Eames House Photographs

The Eames House: A Living Laboratory for Design Exploration 

From its initial construction to its life today as a museum, the Eames House offers a rich tapestry of history, ingenuity, and practical elegance. Commissioned by Arts & Architecture magazine for their Case Study House program, this residence has endured as a beacon of what Charles and Ray stood for—efficiency, innovation, and the honest use of materials. As Charles once said, “Just as a good host tries to anticipate the needs of his guest, so a good architect or a designer or a city planner tries to anticipate the needs of those who will live in or use the thing being designed.”

The Eameses purchased 1.4 acres from Arts & Architecture owner John Entenza in 1945, but the journey to the final construction was rife with modifications and resource constraints. Initial designs by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen , which envisioned a glass and steel box cantilevering dramatically over the property, were shelved. In part, due to material shortages in the post-war era, Charles and Ray turned inward, observing and soaking in the nuances of the site. The eventual design had the house sitting quietly in the land, harmonizing with the natural surroundings rather than imposing on it.

Two distinct boxes make up the residence—one serves as the living quarters and the other as a studio. The house and studio are separated by a concrete retaining wall that integrates seamlessly with the existing landscape. An 8-foot tall by 200-foot long concrete wall helps to anchor the site while also setting a dramatic backdrop for the architecture.

Both structures are predominantly characterized by their steel frame construction, filled with a variety of colored panels. The colored panels aren’t merely decorative; they are functional elements carefully calibrated to provide shifting patterns of light and shade throughout the day. The impact of light, so finely tuned in the design, showcases influences from Japanese architecture.

The Eames House doesn’t just make a statement from the outside; the interiors are equally compelling. The house is a melting pot of the Eameses’ diverse interests and design sensibilities—featuring Isamu Noguchi lamps , Thonet chairs, Native American baskets, and more. The living spaces are meticulously designed to serve multiple functions—a living room that transforms into a workspace, alcoves that turn into intimate conversation spots, and hallways lined with functional storage closets.

Living as Work, Work as Living

One of the most unique aspects of the Eames House is how it serves as a living laboratory for Charles and Ray’s iterative design process. As is evident from their film “Powers of Ten” or the constant evolution of their iconic furniture, the couple believed in refining, adjusting, and perfecting. The house was no different—it was a perpetual project, an embodiment of their philosophy of “life in work and work in life.”

For Charles and Ray, details weren’t just details—they were the product. The panels, steel columns, and even the gold-leaf panel marking the entry door were not afterthoughts but an integral part of the architectural dialogue. The Eames House reflects this in its intricate interplay of textures, colors, and spaces that come together to create a harmonious whole.

The Eames House is notable for its De Stijl influences, seen in the sliding walls and windows that allow for versatility and openness. It stands as a successful adaptation of European modernist principles within an American context.

The Eames House is not just an architectural statement but a comprehensive worldview translated into physical form. From its thoughtful integration with the landscape to its detailed articulations, it represents the legacy of two of the 20 th century’s most influential designers. Charles and Ray

Eames House Plans

Eames House Image Gallery

About Ray and Charles Eames

Charles and Ray Eames were a husband-and-wife design team who became icons of mid-20th-century modern design. Working primarily in the United States, they gained prominence for their contributions across multiple disciplines, including architecture, furniture design, industrial design, film, and exhibitions. Perhaps best known for their innovative furniture pieces, like the Eames Lounge Chair and Molded Plastic Chairs, they also left a lasting impact on architecture, most notably with the Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8. Their work is characterized by a playful yet disciplined approach, with a focus on functional design, innovative use of materials, and the importance of user experience.

Notes & Additional Credits

• While the quote is not specifically about the Eames House, it reflects the philosophy the Eameses applied to their design work, including their home. The Eames House is a manifestation of their belief in the “guest-host relationship,” where every design decision is made with the user’s experience in mind.
• Charles & Ray Eames: 1907-1978, 1912-1988: Pioneers of Mid-century Modernism  by Gloria Koenig

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Eames House and Studio (Case Study House #8)

One of the most famous Mid-Century Modern buildings in Los Angeles, designed by its owners, legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames, as two simple boxes that reflect the Eames' love of industrial design and materials.

Place Details

• Charles and Ray Eames

Designation

• Private Residence - Do Not Disturb

Property Type

• Single-Family Residential
• Los Angeles

Case Study House #8, better known as the Eames House and Studio, is one of the most famous Mid-Century Modern buildings in Los Angeles. It was designed by its owners, legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames, for  Arts & Architecture  magazine’s Case Study House program.

Completed in 1949 along with the adjacent Entenza house (designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen), the Eames property actually contains two adjacent buildings: the two-story house and the matching studio, separated by a small patio. Both buildings are simple boxes that reflect the Eames’ love of industrial design and materials, as well as Ray Eames’ bold graphic and monochromatic sensibility. They are built of steel frames clad in fixed panels made of plaster, wood, and glass, some opaque, some translucent, and some transparent. Pops of white and bright primary colors among the beige, black, and gray panels lend a Mondrian-style touch to the façades.

The design is modular, highlighting its industrial nature, and the structure of the buildings is abundantly evident. But the house’s interior is anything but rigid and cold.

Clad in warm woods and packed with custom-designed furniture, plants, and folk art, the inside of the house illustrates how inviting Modern design can be.

The two-story-high living area feels like a treehouse, lit with natural sunlight dappled by the eucalyptus trees outside. Today, the Eames Foundation maintains the Eames House and Studio as a truthful and inspiring icon of Modern design.

The Conservancy does not own or operate the Eames House and Studio.

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Iconic House: The Eames House, Case Study House 8

By Devanshi Shah

Iconic House

House: Case Study House 8, 1945-1949 Architect: Ray and Charles Eames Style: Mid-20th century modern Location: 203 North Chautauqua Boulevard, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California

About the Case Study House Program

The Eames House, Case Study House 8, was one of roughly two-dozen homes built as part of The Case Study House Program. John Entenza, the publisher of Arts & Architecture magazine, spearheaded the program in the mid-1940s, and it continued through the early 1960s. In a challenge to the architectural community, the magazine announced that it would be the client for a series of homes designed to express man's life in the modern world. These houses were to be built and furnished using materials and techniques derived from the experiences of the Second World War.

About the Architecture

The current building was initially designed as the “Bridge House” by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. Early sketches were published in the Arts & Architecture magazine in 1945, however war-related shortages delayed construction. In 1948, when the material finally arrived, Charles and Ray had fallen in love with the surrounding meadows and reformatted the building using the same material, with the addition of a single steel section. The new plans were published in Art & Architecture magazine in 1949.

The architect had the liberty to choose his client, real or hypothetical, in order to designate the particulars of the house. Charles and Ray proposed that the house they design be “for a married couple working in design and graphic arts, whose children were no longer living at home.” Eames House is a prominent architectural example of the influence of the De Stijl Movement outside Europe. The sliding walls and windows give it the trademark versatility and openness of the De Stijl Movement.

By Kriti Saraswat-Satpathy

By Nivedita Jayaram Pawar

By Ashna Lulla

Current Status

In 2004, Charles's daughter, Lucia Eames, created a not-for-profit organization called the Eames Foundation to preserve and protect the Eames House and to provide educational experiences that celebrate the creative legacy of Charles and Ray Eames.

By Aishwarya Khurana

By Kasturi Gadge

By Deepa Nair

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AD Classics: The Entenza House (Case Study #9) / Charles & Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen & Associates

• Written by Luke Fiederer

Nestled in the verdant seaside hills of the Pacific Palisades in southern California, the Entenza House is the ninth of the famous Case Study Houses built between 1945 and 1962. With a vast, open-plan living room that connects to the backyard through floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors, the house brings its natural surroundings into a metal Modernist box, allowing the two to coexist as one harmonious space.

Like its peers in the Case Study Program, the house was designed not only to serve as a comfortable and functional residence, but to showcase how modular steel construction could be used to create low-cost housing for a society still recovering from the the Second World War. The man responsible for initiating the program was John Entenza , Editor of the magazine Arts and Architecture. The result was a series of minimalist homes that employed steel frames and open plans to reflect the more casual and independent way of life that had arisen in the automotive age.[1]

One of the houses built under the program was to be used by Entenza himself. His project was taken on by industrial designer Charles Eames and architect Eero Saarinen , a pair that had already worked collaboratively for years. Eames would design a house not only for Entenza, but for his own family as well; this house, Case Study House #8, would be sited on the same 1½ acre lot as Entenza’s #9.

The two houses shared more than a site. Each house’s frame was composed of the same structural elements: four-inch H-columns supporting twelve-inch open web joists. This structural system allowed the Entenza House to enclose as much space as possible within a minimal frame.[2] The roof above the house is a simple concrete slab, finished with birch strips covering the soffits. Only four of the steel columns are exposed within the house, while the rest are hidden within the walls.[3]

The dominant feature of the Entenza House is its vast, open-plan living room. Almost half the house is given over to it, the intention being to create a versatile public gathering space which could host either a party of almost forty people, or a gathering of only half a dozen. A large fireplace divides the room into both a wide, uninterrupted space and a more intimate one, providing accommodation for groups of either size. This ability to entertain varying numbers of guests was a primary driver behind the design of the house, thanks to the particular professional requirements of Entenza’s journalistic career.[4]

The living room, already a full 36 feet wide, was made to feel even larger by the installation of floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors along the length of the rear wall. The entire rear facade was glazed, connecting the interior space of the living room to the expansive backyard patio. From within the living room, one could see the Pacific Ocean framed by the narrow mullions of the windows and, further away, the trees dotting the backyard.

Aside from the living room, the Entenza House comprises a dining room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a study. In stark contrast to the open and airy living room, the study was specifically requested by Entenza to be entirely closed, with no windows to invite distractions from the outside world.[5]

It is difficult not to make comparisons between the Eames and Entenza Houses; that the two sit within such close proximity of each other makes it almost inescapable. Beyond their shared structural typology, the two houses take radically different approaches to its application. The Eames House is, above all, a celebration of structure – the steel framework was on open display throughout the entire building.

In subtle contrast, the Entenza House makes almost no overt reference to its structural system. Most of the framework is hidden, with the effect that attention is focused on space and views instead of the building itself. It seems likely that Saarinen’s influence was responsible for this more architectural form of design, distinguishing the collaborative effort from Eames’ independent work on his own home next door.[6]

Entenza lived in his Case Study home for only five years after its completion in 1949. Since that time it has been purchased and inhabited by a series of different owners, each of whom has made their own alterations to the original design.[7] While its neighbor the Eames House has become the headquarters for the Eames Foundation, to this day the Entenza House remains a private residence.

A Virtual Look Into Eames and Saarinen's Case Study House #9, The Entenza House This month's interactive 3D floor plan shows a simple and beautiful steel frame structure designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. The Case Study House Program, initiated by John Entenza in 1945 in Los Angeles, was conceived to offer to the public models of a low cost and modern housing.

• Architects: Charles and Ray Eames , Eero Saarinen and Associates
• Area Area of this architecture project Area:  1600 ft²
• Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  1949

[1] Curtis, William. Modern Architecture Since 1900. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1982. p405. [2] McCoy, Esther. Case Study Houses , 1945-1962. Los Angeles : Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1977. p54. [3] Koenig, Gloria. Charles & Ray Eames . Köln: TASCHEN GmbH, 2005. p41. [4] McCoy, p54. [5] Koenig, p42-43. [6] McCoy, p55. [7] Koenig, p43.

The photographs presented in this text of Case Study House No. 9 (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1950, have been reproduced from the J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute's Julius Shulman Photography Archive. While reproduction has been granted, the copyright remains the property of the  J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

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Eames house, case study house #8.

• Location: Los Angeles California Regional Essays: California Los Angeles County Architect: Charles and Ray Eames Types: single-family dwellings Styles: Mid-Century Modernist California Modernism Materials: glass (material) structural steel

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Katherine Kaford Papineau, " Eames House ", [ Los Angeles , California ], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/CA-01-037-0071 . Last accessed: April 8, 2024.

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The Eames House, residence of designers Charles and Ray Eames, was built on a three-acre plot of land overlooking the coast in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. It was one of the first residences built under the Case Study House Program, a housing project sponsored by Arts and Architecture magazine and its editor, John Entenza. The program opened on the heels of World War II and encouraged an architecture that would express modern life in the postwar world, and Entenza was eager to give modernist architects the opportunity to define the postwar home. Given the accessibility of new materials and techniques locally produced in Los Angeles by the aerospace industry for war efforts, it was easy for the Eamses to adapt such new methods and materials creatively.

Embracing the modernist ethos of marrying art and technology, the Eameses designed their residence and studio using materials such as steel beams, glass panels, and reinforced cable rods from an industrial catalog of prefabricated parts. As originally planned, the design formed one continuous volume that bisected the meadow of the Pacific Palisades lot. The meadow, however, was a favorite picnic site of the Eameses and instead, they chose to divide the plan into two distinct yet aligned structures: one for living and one for working. Because all parts were of standard, prefabricated, mass-produced dimensions, the Eameses were able to simply reconfigure and reuse all materials in the new design, with the addition of only one extra steel beam.

The house and studio sit diagonally facing the ocean, aligned north to south along a retaining wall that supports a steep embankment of eucalyptus trees to the west of the structures. Embracing the goals of the Case Study House Program, the Eameses relied only on prefabricated, standardized parts and used industrial materials such as concrete, glass, steel, insulation board on plywood, corrugated metal, asbestos, stucco, and pylon, a translucent laminate. These industrial materials were carefully arranged into a steel frame of regular bays measuring seven-and-a-half inches wide by twenty feet high. The short leg of the house is three bays wide and eight bays long, including a structural overhang of one bay for the rear patio. A small courtyard with a width of four bays separates the house from the five-bay studio. These rhythmic, steel-framed bays are further divided into smaller rectangular shapes of varying sizes and are filled with either clear or frosted glass, pylon, wood, or stucco. Some sections are solid color blocks painted blue, red, yellow, white, or black. The composition of exposed structure is softened by the artful arrangement of pops of color, akin to a Mondrian painting. The play of solid and void filters the sunlight, provides privacy, and creates ever-changing shadows and patterns on the floor.

The Eames House embraced new materials, technology, and a bright palette of primary colors on the exterior. In contrast to the sleek modernist exterior, the interior is filled with dolls, figurines, quilts, and souvenirs from the couple’s travels in Mexico and India, as well as toys, textiles, furniture, and games they developed through their design firm, Eames Office. More significantly, the original plans included spaces typical of most nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century houses, while the built plan does not. The Eameses omitted the fireplace from the final version of the house, a gesture towards technological advances in heating systems like radiant floor heating.

Today, the Eames House functions as a house museum, preserving the everyday workings of the husband-and-wife design team. Founded in 2004 by Charles’s daughter, Lucia Eames, the Eames Foundation makes the residence accessible to visitors, students, and conservators alike. In 2006, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Albrecht, Donald, ed. The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention . New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Entenza, John. “The Case Study House Program.” Arts and Architecture (January 1945): 37-41.

Kirkham, Pat. Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.

Koenig, Gloria. Charles & Ray Eames, 1907-1978, 1912-1988: Pioneers of Mid-century Modernism. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2005.

McCoy, Esther. “The Case Study House Program.” In Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses, edited by Elizabeth A. T. Smith. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art/MIT Press, 1989.

Steele, James. Eames House: Charles and Ray Eames. London: Phaidon Press, 1994.

Writing Credits

• Location: Los Angeles, California Regional Overviews: Los Angeles County Architect: Charles and Ray Eames Types: single-family dwellings Styles: Mid-Century Modernist California Modernism Materials: glass (material) structural steel

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Architecture

Charles and ray eames made life better by design; their home was no exception.

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The Eames House, built in 1949 in the Pacific Palisades, is considered one of the most important postwar residences in the U.S. The National Historic Landmark celebrates its 70th anniversary this year with a new conservation plan. Julius Shulman/J. Paul Getty Trust hide caption

The Eames House, built in 1949 in the Pacific Palisades, is considered one of the most important postwar residences in the U.S. The National Historic Landmark celebrates its 70th anniversary this year with a new conservation plan.

In 1949, Charles and Ray Eames designed and built their home on a bluff overlooking the ocean in the Pacific Palisades. Features of their house and studio are now ubiquitous, but 70 years ago, they were revolutionary.

Charles was an architect; his wife, Ray, a painter. From their Los Angeles studio, they designed molded plywood office and lounge chairs that are now considered classics. The couple devised toys and made innovative films about math and computers for clients such as IBM and Boeing.

Their home has long been a mecca for artists, students and design enthusiasts. Now, their heirs are working to preserve the house for generations to come.

Ray and Charles Eames stand on the steel frame of their home-in-progress in 1949. Eames Office hide caption

Ray and Charles Eames stand on the steel frame of their home-in-progress in 1949.

The house was built with off-the-shelf, prefabricated materials. Steel beams, painted black, frame panels of glass walls and doors. It seems composed like a Mondrian painting: a block of cobalt blue here, a bright red-orange insert there.

"Ray and I worked on it, we designed it together, of course," Charles Eames explained to TV host Arlene Francis in 1956, on her show Home. "It's composed of standards factory units."

It was known as "Case Study House No. 8" for a program that challenged architects to design modern, inexpensive residences in postwar Southern California. It's now a National Historic Landmark, and the Getty Conservation Institute has been helping plan for its future. Having preserved tombs in Egypt and architectural ruins in China and Latin America, the institute has turned to conserving modern architecture. Susan Macdonald, the GCI's head of buildings and sites, says the project proves the institute can treat modern buildings the same way it treats buildings from the ancient world.

So far, for the Eames house, that has meant repairing the flat roof, replacing the asbestos floor tiles and installing a device to measure air particulates. The house remains open to reservations-only visitors, who must enter without shoes.

Take A Tour Of The Eames House

Tours often begin in the kitchen, where everything was ordered from a catalog and was affordable. The Eameses added their flair, painting an exposed pipe red, installing sliding glass doors and creating artful assemblages.

"You'll see very common things like shells and little tiny objects," points out docent Jennifer Polito. "Together they're beautiful. The candlesticks were important — they had breakfast by candlelight."

A spiral staircase leads upstairs to two bedrooms with movable walls. The 17-foot-tall living room is light and airy. Glass doors open to a meadow, connecting indoors and outdoors. The space is accented by exposed trusses, as well as layered rugs and cozy low-slung couches. And everywhere: fabrics, toys, folk art, books and souvenirs from their travels.

"This is not your sterile, minimalist, unhappy hipsters' home," says Los Angeles Times staff writer Carolina Miranda, who covers art and architecture. "This is a home that is lived in by two people who've been all over the world and are sharing some of what they've harvested in those adventures in their home."

Miranda admires the 1,500-square-foot house, nestled into the hillside. It stands in stark contrast to other houses in the neighborhood.

"It's so thoughtful and considered in terms of its design and its placement on the land," she says. "And then we walk up the hill and we're looking at McMansion construction, essentially. Totally unsympathetic. All they want are big bathrooms and a giant rumpus room. And the ocean view."

Ray and Charles stand outside their home in March 1978. It was known as "Case Study House No. 8" for a program that challenged architects to design modern, inexpensive residences in postwar Southern California. Hap Johnson/Eames Office hide caption

You can glimpse the Pacific from inside the Eames House, too. But unlike its supersize neighbors, it sits far back from the cliff's edge, in a meadow dotted with eucalyptus trees. Ray Eames once told a TV interviewer that they decided to orient the house this way after having lived in the meadow waiting for the house to be built. "We spent all our spare time here," she said. "[I] began to think it would be criminal to put the house in the middle of the field."

The Eameses' granddaughter, Lucia Dewey Atwood, remembers picnicking in that meadow with her grandparents — she visited them often. They lived in harmony with nature, she says. From here, you hear the sounds of birds, tree leaves rustling and, on quiet nights, the ocean waves crashing in the distance.

Atwood says her grandparents were always creative, wondrous hosts. "One time I arrived, and Charles handed me a camera, and we spent the entire morning out in the meadow shooting images of daffodils," she remembers. It turned out he was working on a project for the then-upcoming Polaroid camera, the SX-70.

The historic eucalyptus row dates to the 1880s, and Lucia Dewey Atwood, Charles and Ray's granddaughter, says her 250-year conservation plan takes the trees' life span into account. Leslie Schwartz/Eames Office/J. Paul Getty Trust hide caption

The historic eucalyptus row dates to the 1880s, and Lucia Dewey Atwood, Charles and Ray's granddaughter, says her 250-year conservation plan takes the trees' life span into account.

Decades later, Atwood worked with her grandmother in the studio and lived in the house. She is now on the board of the Eames Foundation, whose goal, she says, is to show the way in which Charles and Ray lived.

"That does mean opening doors and windows; it means pulling curtains. It means having fresh bouquets in the house and having even a living tree in the house," she explains. Atwood admits this poses conservation challenges, but her family doesn't want the house to be a hermetically sealed museum.

She says the 250-year conservation plan she is directing takes into account the life span of the eucalyptus trees. And it incorporates her grandparents' modernist values: a respect for materials, the iterative process of editing, and the ability to see "failure" as an opportunity to learn and to experiment. Also, taking pleasure seriously.

Ray and Charles relax on a built-in sofa in their living room alcove in 1951. Jim Eppinger/Eames Office/J. Paul Getty Trust hide caption

Ray and Charles relax on a built-in sofa in their living room alcove in 1951.

"It's so amazing — if you're working on an important project, you sort of make it be fun," she says. "The ideas are just so much more fantastic. I mean, Charles and Ray really had this wonderful ability to invite you into the fun."

And that was the point, according to the Eameses: to make life better by design.

This story was edited by Nina Gregory.

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Alexandra Griffith Winton Independent Scholar

August 2007

For more than four decades, American designers Charles and Ray Eames helped shape nearly every facet of American life. From their architecture, furniture, and textile designs to their photography and corporate design, the husband-and-wife team exerted a profound influence on the visual character of daily life in America, whether at work or at home. Their pioneering use of new materials and technologies, notably plywood and plastics, transformed the way Americans furnished their homes, introducing functional, affordable, and often highly sculptural objects and furnishings to many middle-class Americans.

Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Ray Kaiser Eames (1913–1988) met while attending the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and they married in 1941. From the beginning of their collaborative partnership, they focused on creating multifunctional modern designs. While at Cranbrook, Charles collaborated with Eero Saarinen on a group of wood furniture designs that won the Museum of Modern Art’s 1940 “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition. These designs, which included experimental molded plywood chairs, were conceived of as functional, affordable options for consumers seeking modern yet livable domestic surroundings. These issues proved to be the salient concerns of much of the Eames’ furniture designs of the next three decades.

The pair moved to Los Angeles in 1941, where Charles initially worked in the movie industry, while Ray created cover designs for the influential journal, California Arts and Architecture . They also continued their experiments with molded plywood, which began with Charles’ Cranbrook collaboration with Saarinen. Through the creative use of this industrial material, the Eameses sought a strong, flexible product capable of taking on myriad shapes and forms. These experiments included the construction of a special machine for molding the plywood, dubbed the Kazam! Machine, but it never produced satisfactory results. However, this work led to the Eames’ important contribution to the war effort. They received a contract from the U.S. Navy to develop lightweight, mass-produced molded plywood leg splints for injured servicemen, as well as aircraft components. Access to military technology and materials provided the final step in the Eames’ successful attempt to create stable molded plywood products. The resulting splint was both highly functional and sculptural, and suggests the fluid, biomorphic forms that characterized many of their subsequent furniture designs.

With the technological process for molding plywood resolved, Charles and Ray applied the method to the design of domestic furniture. After an exhaustive program of prototyping and testing, the first product was a simple plywood chair with both the seat and back supports gently curved so as to ergonomically and comfortably accommodate the human body. It was produced by the Herman Miller Company of Zeeland, Michigan, and marketed as an affordable, multifunctional chair suitable for all modern households. Known as the ECW (Eames Chair Wood) model, this chair is still in production today, and has exerted a profound and lasting impact on twentieth-century furniture design in America.

The Eameses eventually expanded the product line to include molded plywood dining chairs, tables, and storage units. Their experimental approach to materials continued through the subsequent decades with the use of molded fiberglass for a series of inexpensive shell chairs, a collapsible sofa, an upholstered, molded lounge chair, a range of aluminum-framed furniture, and many other innovative designs. The furniture designs of the Eameses were quickly adopted for both domestic and commercial use, and many of these extremely popular items are still in production today.

Ray Eames employed her graphic design skills to create a number of textile designs. Some of these fabrics were monochromatic, while others displayed bold color palettes. Most relied on repetitions of abstract, typically geometric forms, often obviously hand-drawn. The resulting effect was characteristic of much of the Eames’ work: it was both modern and humanistic, abstract yet approachable.

Following the success of their modern furniture designs, Charles and Ray turned their attention to domestic architecture to meet the postwar housing demand. The housing shortage predated the Great Depression, but the return of thousands of World War II veterans, combined with shortages in construction materials, created a real crisis. A project sponsored by California Arts and Architecture magazine, called the Case Study Houses, aimed to provide solutions to this problem by engaging young architects to design and build prototype—or case study—homes. The Eames’ contribution to this project, Case Study House #8, was built in 1951 in Pacific Palisades, California, as a family home for themselves. The Eameses employed standard industrial materials wherever possible, in response to the chronic shortages of many building materials: the factory sash windows, commercial doors, and corrugated steel roofing were all readily available, standard industrial building products. The interior configuration of the house, with its expansive, double-height living room and flexible plan, replaced traditional, fixed room arrangements, and reflected the way the Eames family lived. This adaptable plan comprised of multipurpose spaces became a hallmark of postwar modern architecture. The furniture, art, and objects in the house revealed the Eames’ wide-ranging interests, from international folk art to Native American art to modern art and design. They used their own furniture, manufactured by Herman Miller, throughout the interior, in addition to pieces collected on their numerous trips abroad.

In addition to graphic design, architecture, and furniture and product design, the Eameses also created innovative and groundbreaking films. Many of these were produced as corporate communications projects, such as their numerous films for IBM, while others were made at the behest of government organizations. For example, Glimpses of the U.S.A. , made for the U.S. Information Service, was shown in Moscow in 1959, as was the exhibition and film, The World of Franklin and Jefferson , created as part of the national Bicentennial celebrations.

Griffith Winton, Alexandra. “Charles Eames (1907–78) and Ray Eames (1912–88).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eame/hd_eame.htm (August 2007)

Further Reading

Albrecht, Donald, ed. The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Abrams, 1997.

Demetrios, Eames. An Eames Primer . New York: Universe Publishing, 2001.

Kirkham, Pat. Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.

Additional Essays by Alexandra Griffith Winton

• Winton, Alexandra Griffith. “ Design, 1925–50 .” (October 2004)
• Winton, Alexandra Griffith. “ The Bauhaus, 1919–1933 .” (August 2007; last revised October 2016)

Related Essays

• The Arts and Crafts Movement in America
• Design, 1925–50
• Design, 1950–75
• American Scenes of Everyday Life, 1840–1910
• The Bauhaus, 1919–1933
• Design, 1900–1925
• Design, 1975–2000
• The United States and Canada, 1900 A.D.–present
• 20th Century A.D.
• Modern and Contemporary Art
• Native American Art
• North America
• United States

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• Eames, Charles

Case study conservation on the Eames’ Case Study House

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Surprisingly, little has changed at the Eames House since 1949, when Charles and Ray Eames designed their Pacific Palisades home and studio as a model of affordable modern living. Most of the objects they lived with remain in place at the two-part, rectangular structure on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

Charles died in 1978; his wife and professional partner passed away 10 years later. But they are remembered for their creative use of materials and innovative design of architecture, furniture and industrial products.

Ray’s colorfully patterned dishes, place mats and napkins are stacked in kitchen cabinets. The couple’s clothes fill upstairs closets — suits and dresses on hangers; shoes on the floor; sweaters, hats and scarves in boxes. Their playful approach to design and love of nature linger throughout the space in whimsical folk art, clusters of seed pods and little piles of smooth stones.

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But wait. What’s that windmill-like contraption perched on the ocean side of the grounds? Why do electrical wires and monitoring devices pop up here and there in the house? And why has a tiny section of black paint on a window frame been scraped away, revealing underlying colors?

All these curiosities, along with a new white tile floor in the living room, are evidence of a collaborative effort to conserve a landmark of mid-20th century modern architecture. The Eames House is the pilot project of the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative, launched last year by the Getty Conservation Institute.

Conceived as an experiment in postwar California living, the house emerged from the Case Study Program initiated by John Entenza, editor of Arts & Architecture magazine. With the idea of using new materials and techniques to provide well-designed, mass-producible housing for average Americans, forward-thinking architects such as Charles Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen and Richard Neutra were invited to participate in the program and contribute their own ideas.

Today, the unconventional Eames residence — constructed of prefabricated materials and off-the-shelf products but highly customized — is in the forefront of a struggle to prolong the lives of notable modern buildings.

“Our projects aim to advance conservation practice in some way,” says Susan MacDonald, head of the GCI’s field projects. “The Eames House is of international significance and demonstrates a number of challenges that are shared across houses from this period that are publicly accessible — from environmental issues and collections management to physical conservation challenges related to the use of modern materials.”

Future projects have to be determined, says MacDonald, who is pleased that the first one is in Los Angeles.

“There couldn’t be a better case study for our initiative,” says Kyle Normandin, an architect with extensive conservation experience who is managing the program for the GCI. He came to the Getty from Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. in New York City.

Starting with a needy building of such a high caliber, he says, will emphasize the urgency of the mission.

The timing couldn’t have been better either. The Eames Foundation — charged with preserving the house and the designers’ creative legacy — asked the Getty for help just as the initiative was taking shape. In another stroke of luck, a request from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to re-create the Eames’ living room for its 2011-12 exhibition “Living in a Modern Way: California Design, 1930-1965” coincided with the necessity of replacing the original floor.

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The tiles were brittle and laden with asbestos, and the adhesive attaching them to the concrete slab had been destroyed by moisture seepage. It wasn’t easy to figure out a waterproofing system for the concrete, find a tile adhesive that would emit no dangerous gases and ferret out asbestos-free tiles that looked like the originals.

But instead of being confined to storage for the duration of the work, the furniture and other contents of the room were a highlight of LACMA’s popular and critically acclaimed show. “Living in a Modern Way” is at the National Art Center in Tokyo until June 3, but the Eames living room material didn’t travel with it. The show was part of the Getty’s original “Pacific Standard Time” exhibitions.

The foundation approached the Getty for general guidance as well as advice on specific issues, says Lucia Dewey Atwood, a member of the foundation’s board and a granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames. The floor was done first because of the exhibition.

“Our situation is very unusual,” Atwood says, “because we are not just preserving the structure. We are preserving the contents, and at times, those two things come into conflict.” One obvious difficulty is that light streaming through windows of a house designed as an indoor-outdoor space inevitably damages sensitive fabrics and artworks.

Members of the Getty team, including GCI scientists and conservators at the museum, will offer advice to the foundation, based on a variety of tests and analyses. They will also help to develop a long-term conservation management plan.

“In this particular case,” Normandin says, “it isn’t just the environment of the house. It’s the environment of the site. The house sits in a meadow overlooking the ocean. There’s a marine environment. We need to look at temperature fluctuations on a day-by-day basis, humidity levels and how they change over time, as well as wind, precipitation and temperature differentials.”

What looks like a spindly windmill is a weather station that downloads information and transmits it to the GCI. Inside the house, a different monitoring system measures temperature, humidity and light.

“We wanted to compare data collected over a long period of time at the weather station with what was happening in the interior of the house,” Normandin says. “A holistic program of monitoring is going to give us an opportunity to fine-tune a climate control system that the Eames Foundation will be able to use in the future, one that will stabilize the environment of the house and protect the contents and interior finishes.”

(The property continues to be open for tours by reservation, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily except Sundays and Wednesdays. Visitors cannot go inside the house, but much of the interior can be seen from outside.)

Other investigations of the structure have already produced results. GCI conservator Emily MacDonald-Korth’s excavation of paint on a steel window frame showed that the familiar black top coat covers hand-mixed grays, probably created by Ray Eames. Atwood says the tests show that the grays were tinted with mineral pigments, including red iron oxide, Prussian blue and chrome yellow, and they confirm verbal and written accounts of paint colors in earlier days.

Yet another exploration has solved a mystery — the identity of wood on a living room wall that continues outside under a roof. Getty Museum conservator Arlen Heginbotham got the job and determined that it is a species of eucalyptus, commonly known as Australian tallowwood and quite similar to the large eucalyptus trees alongside the house.

“We don’t think for one second that choice was accidental,” Normandin says. “Charles and Ray obviously picked a very warm wood that could be used in the house and tied in with the landscape that they enjoyed so much.” It has now been lightly cleaned and varnished to maintain its original appearance.

“What’s so exciting to us,” Atwood says, “is that this project echoes the original Case Study Program.”

Just as the postwar program was meant to make cutting-edge housing widely accessible, the Eames House project is intended to have a far-reaching impact.

“We must share our findings, with the hope that other people can adapt it knowledgeably to their own needs,” Atwood says.

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Southern California’s Case Study Homes Reimagined Modern Living, and Remain Relevant Today

“they introduced us to a better way of living,” one expert says, the case study houses were experiments in american residential architecture., newsletter sign-up, week in review.

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On a Friday afternoon in the spring, a small group wandered below a canopy of towering eucalyptus trees in an idyllic and sun dappled Southern California yard. The Pacific Ocean below sparkled a dazzling shade of blue, birds chirped and sang overhead, and cheerful bright orange poppies blanketed a nearby hillside embankment.

The crowd was here to take a self-guided tour of the Eames House, an architectural marvel of glass and steel, built by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray, in the late-1940s. The couple moved into the property on Christmas Eve 1949, and continued to live and work there for more than a quarter century until their deaths. In 2004, the couple’s step-daughter, who then owned the house, gave it as a gift to the non-profit Eames Foundation, which she founded in part to protect it. In 2006, it was declared a National Historic Landmark.

The house, situated on a Pacific Palisades bluff, north of Santa Monica and south of Malibu, is “unselfconscious,” “created in its own little world, screened all around by trees, foliage and hills,” which serve as a “shock absorber,” according to the description of the property in the December 1945 issue of Arts & Architecture magazine. It was here that the Eames House was introduced as part of the magazine’s famed Case Study Houses program, for which publisher John Entenza commissioned major architects of the day to design and build affordable and efficient model homes meant to address the mid-century housing boom and serve as a template for how returning GIs and their families wanted to live after World War II.

Between 1945 and 1966, 36 homes were designed and 25 were built—most of them in Los Angeles. The Eames House—Case Study House #8—is one of two that has nonprofit status, and is eagerly toured by architecture buffs from around the world. The other is Pierre Koening’s iconic Stahl House—Case Study House #22—which overlooks the city’s expanse from a point of remove in the Hollywood Hills.

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Of the 23 homes that remain, three were demolished over the years, and another four were renovated past the point of recognition. The 16 Case Study Houses that remain in close-to or in their original forms, designed by architecture greats including Craig Ellwood and Richard Neutra, are owned and lived in by private individuals, and traded at a premium every time they change hands.

But why are these homes that were meant to be affordable, and cater to an average American family, now worth millions? The answer to that question is multi-layered.

There’s the architecture itself, and the style that was introduced as part of the Case Study program—modest in scale, modern and easy to live in, with a harmony between indoor and outdoor spaces, an abundance of natural light, and a type of open-floor plan that’s still in demand today.

Floor to ceiling windows in Case Study House #18.

Then there’s the land, handpicked decades ago because it was so good, with views of the ocean or mountains, flat lots, with a connection to nature, that is now near-impossible to find in an increasingly dense and urban L.A.

And finally, more than anything, they’re traded at a premium because over time, they have been elevated to become exceedingly rare classic works of art.

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“This limited edition of homes will never be expanded—and will, in fact, likely diminish—because one will be destroyed somehow,” said Billy Rose, president of the L.A.-based real estate firm The Agency, who sold Case Study House #20A for $12.5 million in 2016. “There is some intrinsic value to that.”

And unlike in Europe or other parts of the world, where such rare and valued art might stay in a family for generations, in California, where the average person moves every four years, that isn’t the case, said Frank Langen, a realtor with Deasy Penner Podley, who listed Case Study House #18 in April 2018 for $10 million. “Everything is for sale in Southern California,” Mr. Langen said, "even the architecture.”

Art You Can Live In

One Case Study property that is considered functional art, not shelter, according to Mr. Rose, is Case Study House #21B, which sold in February for $3.26 million. Situated on an “A” lot in a Hollywood Hills canyon, the experimental and minimalist Pierre Koenig-designed property, which is also known as the “Walter Bailey House,” was originally designed for a childless couple, and is just 1,280 square feet.

Case Study House #21 was designed by American architect Pierre Koenig.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, the property was bought by film producer Allison Sarofim from art gallerist P.J. Park in February. During the 12 years that Mr. Park owned the house, he occasionally used it as an outpost for his Seomi International Gallery, hosting art shows and exhibitions in the space, said Andy Butler, marketing director for Compass Realty’s Aaron Kirman Partners group, who represented the seller in this sale.

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At that price—over $3 million and close to $3,000 per square foot for what is essentially a one-bedroom apartment—“it’s almost like buying a Picasso,” Mr. Butler said. “Buyers of this type of home typically have tens of millions of dollars’ worth of art in their private collection, of which this home is now part.”

As part of an art collection, owners of Case Study Homes don’t often live full-time in the property, but rather reside in a much larger space. Or if they do choose to live in it full time, it is “for a moment in their life,” Mr. Butler said. “People want to live in the art—to have parties there, and other architects come through—but they probably wouldn’t do that for any length of time because they are used to and can afford much more space.”

The Case Study Premium

Once it’s clear why Case Study Homes are worth so much, the question becomes: Are they worth more than other similar mid-century homes designed by Case Study architects because of that label? Mr. Langen, who sold a non-Case Study home designed by Craig Ellwood, would say yes—pointing to #21B as a reason why.

Known as “The Smith House,” the property that he sold this summer, was completed in 1958, and is located in the architecturally significant Brentwood community of Crestwood Hills. At 1,500 square feet, with an additional 530 square feet of outdoor deck space, it is larger than the Koenig house, yet, at $2.3 million, sold for almost $1 million less. “Mine was arguably a better house,” he said, “in a better location.” While the market did go down in the six months between the sales, at least part of the premium, he said, is based on the Case Study name.

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Mr. Butler agreed. “The Case Study Program name definitely adds something extra,” he said.

But sometimes, that price premium can be made less clear by outside factors, like the addition of a second home to a Case Study lot.

This happened to two of the three Case Study Homes that are located on lots adjacent to the Eames House on that Pacific Palisades bluff. For the first—Case Study House #20A, which was designed by Richard Neutra and previously owned by the late-“Simpsons” TV series co-creator, Sam Simon—there is a second, much larger (almost 9,000-square-foot) house on the lot. Mr. Rose sold the pair together in 2016 for $12.5 million, and notes that the high price wasn’t for the Neutra home alone. But the second property may have negatively impacted a price-per-square-foot premium. “The other house kind of saddled the Case Study program home,” Mr. Rose said, adding that he thinks they would have gotten a larger premium if they could have separated #20A out. “The other house just wasn’t as sympathetic, or harmonious, with the land.”

The second Pacific Palisades home with an additional much larger house on the lot is #9, which was designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, and is known as the “Entenza House.” As you walk up a long driveway to the Eames House, you can see the Entenza House to your left, and the two-story Barry Berkus behemoth that was built on the lot and blocks the Case Study Home’s view. Together, the pair sold for $15.95 million in 2012.

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“If you’re studying architecture, you learn about the Eames House, which is timeless, and perfectly integrates the home with nature,” Mr. Langen said. “But then right next to it is the Berkus house, which is the only home on that plot that you can see from down on the beach. It serves as a sort of antithesis to the Case Study program.”

The final Pacific Palisades lot houses Case Study House #18. This Rodney Walker-designer property, known as “West House,” was listed in April 2018 for $10 million, and is currently being leased by a long-term renter for $20,000 per month.

Case Study House #18 was listed for $10 million.

At just over 1,700 square feet, #18 is somewhat larger than the other Case Study Homes. But the current $20,000 per month lease price is significantly higher than what it is worth, Mr. Langen said, adding that, “if it wasn't a Case Study house, there is no reason it should rent for more than $7,000 per month.” Even if you tack on an extra $5,000 per month for the exquisite ocean views, that still leaves $8,000 per month left of value that in part can be attributed in part to the Case Study name.

When it was listed for $10 million, Mr. Langen said much of that cost was for the land, as there is plenty of room to build on the half-acre lot. But because #18 is landmarked and can’t be torn down, Mr. Langen said he has to wait for the right buyer. “Design sensibility and money don’t always go hand in hand,” he said. “It’s definitely a small market.”

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Case Study House #18's current lease price is significantly higher than what it is worth, according to the property's listing agent.

An Enduring Legacy

While Case Study Homes are rare, and the ones that remain no longer cater to the “average American,” for which they were intended, their impact on affordable housing, private buildings and public community spaces is clear, said architect Michael Bohn, senior principal and design director at Studio One Eleven, a Southern California-based firm known for progressive, urbanist architecture.

“That first group of Case Study architects established the outdoors as being important on both a city-scale and an individual building-scale,” he said, “which has been embraced by architects everywhere.”

When trying to address the affordable housing problem in Southern California by building more dense, mixed-use projects, architects know that it’s important to have, “ample daylight and connectivity to the outdoors—if not through a private yard, then through a private courtyard, that a lot of people can use at one time,” he said. “All of our projects embrace the ideas of community and authenticity and indoor-outdoor harmony.”

Additionally, as was the impetus of the Case Study Homes, affordability is often pursued by using new materials and new construction technologies, such as shipping containers, modular housing and new types of timber construction, as glass and steel were first used in residential design as part of the post-World War II program.

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Beyond affordable housing, the principles of modernism introduced by the Case Study program, including the push to strip away the unnecessary and ornamental, including baseboards and moldings that you might find in “Old World” homes, like Tudors, and Mediterraneans, and focus on building homes that are functional and utilitarian, has also endured at all price points.

“If you drive through Palm Springs or the Bird Streets in Beverly Hills today, you see the effect of the Case Study Houses everywhere,” Mr. Butler said.

Mr. Rose agreed. “I typically get three to six calls every year from real estate agents who say, ‘I’ve got a client looking for a Case Study Home. Do you know anyone building one?’” he said, with a laugh. “But what their client is really looking for is a contemporary or modern home with indoor-outdoor harmony.”

Seventy years after their introduction, “Case Study” is now shorthand for that, Mr. Rose said, and for good reason. “They introduced us to a better way of living,” he said, “and a much better lifestyle.”

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California Case Study Houses

In January 1945 John Entenza, the editor and publisher of Arts & Architecture magazine, announced the Case Study Houses Program (CSHP), which was envisioned as a creative response to the impending building boom expected to follow the housing shortages of the Great Depression and World War II. 

Case Study House #22 Los Angeles by Pierre Koenig | Photo © Julius Shulman

Entenza encouraged participating architects to use donated materials from industry and manufacturers to create low-cost, modern housing prototypes that might foster a dialogue between architectural professionals and laymen. The Case Study Houses were built between 1945-1966 mostly in LA by Richard Neutra , Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood , Charles and Ray Eames , Pierre Koenig and Eero Saarinen . 

Case Study House #8 at the Pacific Palisades in LA. | Photo via Wikipedia

The Eames House is a landmark of mid-20th century modern Architecture and was constructed in 1949 by Charles & Ray Eames to serve as their home and studio.

The Eames House consists of two glass and steel rectangular boxes: one is a residence; one a working studio. | Photo © Herman Miller

The design was first sketched out by Charles Eames with Eero Saarinen in 1945 as a raised steel and glass box projecting out of the slope and spanning the entrance drive before cantilevering dramatically over the front yard. 

The house emphasise connection to the desert landscape while offering shelter from harsh climatic conditions. | Photo via Blenheim Gang

The Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs was designed by Richard Neutra in 1946. It is one of the most important examples of International Style architecture in the United States

With a simple rectangular design, the house is divided into two separate sections. | Photo via Urbipedia

The Case Study House #18b was the more successful in the series of Craig Ellwood. One of the most significant improvements was the preconstruction factory structure and combining this with other pre-built elements such as walls, floors. Another standard feature was the sliding doors in the living spaces of the house that overlooked the terrace and a pool for entertaining guests or family.

The design emphasizes harmony of materials and balance between interior and exterior through the use of terraces, water and skylights. | Photo via The City Project

In the Case Study House #21 , an early-career exploration, Pierre Koenig used a constrained set of industrial materials—primarily steel and glass—to execute a pure expression of his design approach. His philosophy of functionality and honesty in aesthetics manifests in a structure that appears simple but contains complexity in plan and organization.

Case Study House #22 in the Hollywood Hills was designed by Pierre Koenig. The house is considered an iconic representation of modern architecture in Los Angeles during the 20th century. 

The house was made famous by a photo of Julius Shulman showing two women leisurely sitting at a corner of the house with a panoramic view of the city through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls at night. | Photo © Julius Shulman

The highly publicized program ran from 1945 to 1964, spanning thirty-six individual designs, many of which were never constructed. The initial program announcement stated that “each house must be capable of duplication and in no sense be an individual performance” and that “the overall program will be general enough to be of practical assistance to the average American in search of a home in which he can afford to live.”

Eames House – The Modern Stylings of Case Study House 8

The Eames House, which is also referred to as the Case Study House 8, is a prime example of modern architecture that is found in Los Angeles. The Eames House had a large impact on interior design as a concept and is overall very inspirational to architects and interior designers alike. Charles and Ray Eames were pioneers of combining human-centered design with warmth and comfort to create a perfect living and working space for them, their family, and guests.

Table of Contents

• 1.1 About Charles and Ray Eames
• 2.1 How the House Was Built
• 2.2 The Exterior of the Eames House
• 2.3 The Interior of the Eames House
• 3 Conservation of the Eames House
• 4.1 Who Lived in the Eames House?
• 4.2 How Many Case Study Houses Still Exist?
• 4.3 Are the Case Study Houses Open for Visitation?
• 4.4 What Is a Case Study in Architecture?
• 4.5 What Is the Significance of the Eames House?
• 4.6 How Much Is the Eames House Worth?
• 4.7 How Much Does It Cost to Visit the Eames House?

History of the Eames House

The Eames House was part of the Los Angeles Arts and Architecture Magazine Case Study Program when it was designed in 1945. The goal of these case study homes was for them to prioritize the use of modern technology and materials that were invented during World War II.

The Case Study House 8 was designed and built by the husband-and-wife duo, Charles, and Ray Eames in 1949, who moved into the house that same year. The house served as their home and creative studio for the remainder of their lives, which was a total of 40 years of occupying the house. Charles passed in 1978 and Ray passed in 1988, exactly ten years later, to the day.

The objective of the house was for it to be built entirely from prefabricated materials that would not in any way disturb the site and surrounding nature while demonstrating a modern style that is economical and easy to build.

The brief also stated that the architect had the choice of freedom when it came to the real or hypothetical client. The proposal that Charles and Ray submitted suggested that the client of the house is to be “a married couple working in design and graphic arts, whose children were no longer living at home”, which uncoincidentally was exactly the period where they were in their lives, making the client very real.

Originally, the house was baptized the “Bridge House” and designs were published by Charles Eames and fellow architect Eero Saarinen.

War-related shortages, however, put an abrupt stop to their original plans for the house. Originally Charles and Ray wanted to build two separate buildings: A hillside studio and a separate house with a view of the ocean. By the time the war was over, the couple had a close connection to the surrounding meadows, and they chose to reconceptualize Case Study House 8.

They did this by merging the two buildings while still making use of the same amounts of materials, with the addition of a single steel segment.

In 2004, Lucia Eames, Charles’s daughter, created the Eames Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to protect and preserve Ray and Charles’ house as well as offer educational events to celebrate the legacy of Charles and Ray Eames. In 2006, the house was selected as a national historic landmark. In 2020, over 200 eucalyptus trees were harvested on the property for preservation purposes.

Two of these trees were used to manufacture a special edition of the class Eames Low Table Rod (LTR) table, which included solid-wooden tops.

About Charles and Ray Eames

Charles Ormond Eames, Jr. and Bernice Alexandra “Ray” Kaiser Eames were industrial designers, graphic designers, artists, and filmmakers. Charles and Ray met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Charles was first a scholar of an industrial design fellowship, but later became an instructor. Ray enrolled in multiple courses at the academy in order to expand upon her preceding education in abstract painting. Charles separated from his first wife and then married Ray in 1941. They used their honeymoon time to move to Los Angeles.

It was in Venice, Los Angeles where they began The Eames Office in a former garage while working on furniture design for 13 hours a day and seven days a week.

They worked under the name of their own company, the Eames Office where they contributed greatly to architecture and furniture design. The most well-known furniture pieces that they have designed are the Eames Lounge Chair and the Eames Dining Chair. The Eames were believers in “learning by doing”, and they taught multiple notable designers.

They were the founding fathers of plywood molding, which they tested over and over until they perfected the skill.

Charles and Ray Eames were also the masterminds of the company Herman Miller, which is a 112-year-old global décor and furniture company. Some of the original Herman Miller furniture designs were even created in and for the Case Study House 8, such as their ottoman and lounge chair.

Charles strongly believed in the architectural design principles of Frank Lloyd Wright , which unfortunately resulted in him being expelled from Washington University’s architecture program. In terms of his architecture career, he designed three houses in St. Louis as well as two churches in Arkansas without an architecture license.

Charles and Ray Eames were big believers in ergonomic design: designing for the needs and measurements of humans. They were known for sampling and testing designs and furniture pieces over and over until they got it exactly right.

The lines were blurred between their living and working life, and as such their guests were usually the happy guinea pigs of their new inventions.

Taking a Closer Look at the Eames House

What started out as a case study turned into the lifelong home and workplace of two creatives who intended for the house to be a blueprint for living. In order to fulfill Charles and Ray’s wishes it is important that we closely analyze their intent for the house, the site as well as the interior and the exterior in order to be able to fully understand how all of it came together.

How the House Was Built

Solely making use of the off-the-shelf parts that were ordered, along with one extra steel beam, a two double-story structure with two parts was erected and designed into the landscape, instead of just enforcing the building on top of it. A concrete retaining wall that is 8 feet tall and 200 feet long acts as a support for the steel frame. The steel frame of the house consists of two rows of four-inch I-beams that were placed 20 feet apart.

The foundation for the house and the steel frame was completed in a mere 16 hours by a total of five workers, and the rest of the house was finalized within a short eleven months.

The house consists of two boxes that serve two different functions: One box was for living, and the other served as their work and creative studio. Both boxes are double volume at each end of the combined cube which continues through to the exterior courtyards. A simplistic pre-manufactured steel frame was used to build the house.

The steel frames consist of four-inch I-beams for the walls and further 12-inch-deep web trusses for the structure of the roof.

The Exterior of the Eames House

The house is built on top of a 150-foot cliff with views of the Pacific Ocean. The site is mostly flat aside from one steep part of the land that imitates a western retaining wall. The house is a true example of the De Stijl Movement that took place outside of Europe.

Key characteristics of the De Stijl Movement were sliding walls and windows, which the Eames House has plenty of.

Between the steel frames are a variety of transparent and solid-colored panels that are made from glass, fiberglass-like “pylon”, asbestos, plywood, and plaster. These panels were arranged specifically according to the changing sunlight inside the house throughout the day. The arrangements of these panels suggest a clear Japanese influence.

The combination of the black lines created by the pre-manufactured steel supports and the primary-colored panels have a sense of familiarity to it because it strongly reminds of the famous Piet Mondrian paintings . While doing a paint excavation study for the conservation plan of the house, researchers found that some of the panels were previously painted a warm gray, which indicated that Ray Eames mixed the paint by hand.

Somewhere along the road, black paint was used over the existing gray paint.

The entrance door has a clearly marked gold-leaf panel above it, which makes it easily identifiable. A small courtyard splits the main house and the studio and was not part of the original plans, but luckily only required one extra beam. A central courtyard that visually combines the two buildings is paved with brick, marble, and wooden pavers that were arranged in a grid shape.

The Interior of the Eames House

In contrast to the cold steel frames that make up the skeleton of the house, the interior of the Ray and Charles’ house is very warm, colorful, and inviting, especially considering the wooden floor finish used throughout. Wooden staircases connect the upper and lower level of the house.

The use of these natural materials is an ode to nature, linking the interior with the exterior and blurring the lines of architecture and nature.

The underside of the ribbed ceiling of the Ferrobord roof decking was painted white, which makes the colorful primary painted exposed web joists stand out against it and makes it a design feature in its own right. The interior of the house is a completely free-flowing space with no evident divisions between spaces, even private and public areas are blurred. For example, the bedroom on the top floor overlooks the public living area on the bottom floor, with only a short terrace that joins the two rooms.

There is, however, a corrugated glass screen that conceals the utility area behind the kitchen, where food was prepared in copious amounts by Ray on a regular basis. This was because they loved hosting others but also believed that the mess of daily life should be hidden in some way from your guests to make their experience as pleasurable as possible.

The lower level of the house includes a living room with an alcove with a built-in corner sofa, a spiral staircase, a hallway with closets, the kitchen, and utility space.

The Eames House bedroom can be found on the upper mezzanine level of the house. The bedroom has a sliding wood panel in the middle, that when closed, clearly divides the Eames House bedroom into a separate master bedroom and a guest bedroom when needed. The Eames House bedroom overlooks the double-volume living area and acts as a mezzanine level. Also included on the second story are multiple hallways with aluminum closets, two bathrooms, and a wire-fixed skylight.

The studio building also boasts a mezzanine level, but one that is much shorter in length than that of the main building. The studio’s ground floor consists of a bathroom, a utility sink, a dark room for the processing of photographs, and also a large double-volume space to inspire and create within. The mezzanine was originally used only for storage, but also served occasionally as the guest quarters.

The main house consists of two bathrooms, which was a surprising thing for the time, as it was the norm for traditional houses to only contain one bathroom.

The reasoning behind this was that only the husband had to get ready for work during the mornings. Of course, post-war, when women were also becoming accustomed to having jobs, the multi-bathroom home became a popular notion in America. The multi-bathroom facilities are also an ode to how Charles and Ray valued their visitors and their experience of the house visit. The studio block also contains a bathroom, as the family usually ended up sleeping there during the summer.

The décor inside the house consists of a wide collection of things that Charles and Ray accumulated throughout their lives: fold art, toys, seashells, bright textiles, expressionist abstract paintings, antiques, and furniture pieces designed by themselves. The interior of the house is a great example of the style of that period as well as the role that California modernism played in architecture within an international context. Their interior collection also includes Isamu Noguchi floor lamps, Japanese kokeshi dolls, Native American baskets, Chinese lacquered pillows, and Thonet chairs.

The interior of the house is sometimes described as maximalist, which sparked controversy as it was so contrasting to the much-loved Modernism-style. Fans of the Eames house applauded Charles and Ray for “humanizing” modernism.

The items in the Eames House living room were briefly transferred to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and displayed from 2011 to 2012 for an exhibition. This was something that had to be done to obtain the necessary funds to address the general wear and tear on the house. During this time, the deteriorated floor tiles were also removed, which exposed the original concrete floor below.

Conservation of the Eames House

Although the house was so easy to erect, and a delight to live in as well as visit, the Ray and Charles’ house is not without its problems. Being so close to the ocean, the steel columns have to be repainted constantly to deter rust and corrosion. Although right next to the ocean, being in LA, the site is very desert-like as well, which is not a positive characteristic for the site on which a building is to be conserved. This along with the use of rubber flooring that discolors over time and the wear and tear of the parquet flooring makes the house a very high-maintenance building.

Being a historic treasure, these faults pose a great threat, as they become an eye sore to the visitor, which alters the experience that Charles and Ray wanted people to experience when visiting the house: to enjoy the house in relation to the landscape.

The Getty Conservation Institute has started implementing practical but unobstructed ways to conserve the house moving forward. The idea is to keep the house as true as possible to the time when Charles and Ray Eames were occupying it. This means that things like watermarks in corners that result from Charles spritzing his beloved plants with water daily should be left untouched where possible and only finished with invisible UV protectors to extend the materials’ life.

During the Getty-sponsored exhibition in 2011, where all the contents of the double-volume Eames House living room were temporarily relocated to the Los Angeles County Museum, professional conservators had the opportunity to properly assess the damage to the structure. With the entire Eames House living room cleared out, it was the perfect opportunity to repair asbestos-covered cracked flooring, which needed urgent attention. The floor was replaced with vinyl-composite tile flooring.

The most urgent of all the problems was the separation of glazing and steel caused by water seeping down the glass facades. The first phase of the repairs needed to be done before the contents of the house could be reinstated and ended up costing almost five thousand euros.

The problem was that to respect the wishes of Charles and Ray Eames, the house could not be sealed off like typical museums. The idea was for living things like plants and flowers to still be very evident in the house and for visitors to use the house as Charles and Ray intended it to be used. This meant that live plants had to be included and windows and doors had to be in working condition.

Along with the previously mentioned measures, the furniture and décor of the house are kept in the same locations as Charles and Ray had them when they were still alive. The curtains of the house also remain drawn most of the time to reduce the damage of light exposure to the contents within the house.

The Eames House is regarded as the most successful out of the twenty-five Case Study houses that were built. This is because it was considered a functional and comfortable living space while at the same time making an architectural statement. The Case Study House 8 was such an inspiration that it was even used as the setting for fashion shoots during the 1950s and 1960s for magazine publications like “Vogue”. Just goes to show that human-centered design was and will probably always be the most sought-after design style.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who lived in the eames house.

The house was not only designed and overseen by the husband-and-wife duo, Charles and Ray Eames, but it also served as their primary home and art studio. The couple happily lived in the house until their deaths.

How Many Case Study Houses Still Exist?

Until today, 20 out of the 36 experimental prototypes still exist, although many were never built to begin with. Most of the case study houses can be found in Southern California, and a few are also in Northern California and San Diego. Another small group of Case Study apartments was also established in Phoenix.

Are the Case Study Houses Open for Visitation?

The two most popular case study houses, being the Eames House and the Stahl House , are open for visitation to the public. The Eames house is restricted to four or five visitors at a time in order to preserve the house as much as possible while raising funds for the necessary repairs.

What Is a Case Study in Architecture?

A case study is seen as the in-depth research and documentation of a built project from the design process right through to the installation and habitation. The aim of case study houses is to continually learn from mistakes and improve on future builds.

What Is the Significance of the Eames House?

The Eames House is an almost perfect example of the De Stijl movement that originated outside of Europe. The most obvious characteristics are the versatility and openness of the interior space. After the Eameses passed, the house also remained mostly unchanged and very well preserved throughout the years.

How Much Is the Eames House Worth?

During its time, Case Study House 8 was estimated at one dollar per square foot. In 2018, this number has sprung to over ten dollars per square foot.

How Much Does It Cost to Visit the Eames House?

Currently, it costs $10 to tour the exterior of the house and only peek through the windows to the interior views.

Kylie Deyzel is an interior designer and sustainability enthusiast from Cape Town, South Africa. She has a passion for writing and educating others on various interior design topics. Her favorite interior design topics include interior design theory, interior design history, and most of all: sustainable interior design.

She received her B-tech degree in interior design from the University of Johannesburg in 2018 and has worked at various interior design firms since and had a few of her own freelance interior design clients under her company name binnekant.

Learn more about the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Kylie, Deyzel, “Eames House – The Modern Stylings of Case Study House 8.” Art in Context. July 8, 2022. URL: https://artincontext.org/eames-house/

Deyzel, K. (2022, 8 July). Eames House – The Modern Stylings of Case Study House 8. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/eames-house/

Deyzel, Kylie. “Eames House – The Modern Stylings of Case Study House 8.” Art in Context , July 8, 2022. https://artincontext.org/eames-house/ .

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Architecture

Case study house 8: the eames house in california revels in authenticity and honesty, the modern residence of charles and ray eames is an architectural statement of comfortable and functional living spaces., november 24, 2021.

The Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California is widely considered as one of the great houses of the 20th century. Also known as the Case Study House 8, this beautiful piece of architecture is an internationally renowned work of postwar, modern architecture. 

Sitting atop a rounded cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and surrounded by a meadow dotted with eucalyptus trees, The Eames House was built by husband-and-wife design pioneers Charles and Ray Eames to serve as their home and studio. Charles was an architect while his wife, Ray, was a painter. From this home studio, they designed the molded plywood office and lounge chairs that are now considered iconic pieces of art.

Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen did the house’s original design. It was initially called the “Bridge House” and was introduced alongside seven other Case Study Program homes in the January 1945 issue of  Arts & Architecture Magazine . In a challenge to the architectural community, the magazine announced that it would be the client for a series of homes designed to express man’s life in the modern world. These houses were to be built and furnished using materials and techniques acquired from the experiences of WWII. Each home would be specific in its intention for either a real or hypothetical client, considering various housing needs and scenarios of the era. Charles and Ray Eames became clients of their own Case Study House. It proposed a house for a married couple in design and graphic arts where work, play, life, and nature coexisted.

Materials for the “Bridge House” were ordered, and the design was published in the said issue of the magazine. Unfortunately, due to a war-driven shortage, the steel did not arrive until late 1948. After a heavy reconfiguration of the plan, it was built using only prefabrications from industrial, commercial, and off-the-shelf materials. Construction began in February 1949, and after 16 hours, the foundation and steel panels were complete. The remainder of the modular home was finished by December. 

The couple moved into Case Study House 8 on Christmas Eve in 1949 and lived there for the rest of their lives. The Eames House consists of two glass and rectangular steel boxes: a residence and a working studio. They are nestled into a hillside, backed by an eight-foot-tall by 200-foot-long concrete retaining wall. At 17 feet tall, each has an airy mezzanine balcony overlooking a large central room. Exterior shows black painted steel beams, frame panels of glass walls, and doors. The couple added their flair – placed a block of cobalt blue on one panel, a yellow on another, and a bright red-orange at another panel that seemed to be composed like a Piet Mondrian painting. Glass doors open to a meadow, connecting indoors and outdoors. The space is accented by exposed trusses, as well as layered rugs and a cozy low-slung couch. A spiral staircase leads upstairs to two bedrooms with movable walls. Features of the house and studio are now ubiquitous, but during that time, they were revolutionary.

The Eames Foundation currently maintains the Eames House. It has been considered a National Historic Landmark since 2006. The Getty Conservation Institute has been helping plan for its future. The Eames House Conservation Project aims to develop a long-range strategy for the ongoing conservation, maintenance, and display of the house, its contents, and landscape. In September 2011, to promote conservation work, the Eames Foundation lent the living room contents to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the exhibit,  California Design, 1930-1965: “Living in a Modern Way.”  The presentation provided an opportunity to commence comprehensive investigations of the exterior envelope and interior of the house and prompted the Eames Foundation and the Getty Conservation Institute’s partnership. So far, for the Eames house, that has meant repairing the flat roof, replacing the asbestos floor tiles, and installing a device to measure air particulates. Its materials, interior collections like fabrics, toys, folk art, books from their travels, and landscaping are kept as they were during Charles and Ray’s lifetimes; all three elements tell the story of the couple’s life and work.

Of the twenty-five Case Study Houses built, the Eames house is considered the most successful both as a post-World War II architectural statement and as a comfortable, functional living space. The house is a living laboratory of the Eameses’ ideas and creativity, elucidating their approaches to life and work in a multi-layered, instinctive manner. The Eames House continues to inspire generations of architects, designers, and an array of design devotees across the globe. Charles And Ray Eames truly made life better by design, and their home was no exception.

Photo Credits: Daniel Lampa ©

Notes about the Contributor

Daniel Lampa

Art enthusiast and into Fashion, French Culture, Mid-century modern design and spends a lot of his time curating his home in Manila and LA. He lives with his 3 dogs, Coco, Yohji and Junya.

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