As I was reading about Charles Eames and researching about his design style,I started to co-relate his personality to the main character of Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead….. Digging through more revealed that he indeed resembled the high minded architect Howard Roark from The Fountainhead!

(Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the 20th century By Pat Kirkham)

Charles and Ray Eames were American designers who made major contributions to Modern Architecture and Furniture. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art and film.

The Eames House in Pacific Palisades stands as an epitome of Midcentury California design, an expression of modernity and optimism that many still emulate today.(LA Times)

The Eames House, Case Study House #8, was one of roughly two dozen homes built as part of The Case Study House Program. Begun in the mid-1940s and continuing through the early 1960s, the program was spearheaded by John Entenza, the publisher of Arts and 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 homes were to be built and furnished using materials and techniques derived from the experiences of the Second World War. Each home would be for a real or hypothetical client taking into consideration their particular housing needs.

Charles and Ray proposed that the home they designed would be for a married couple working in design and graphic arts, whose children were no longer living at home. They wanted a home that would make no demands for itself, and would serve as a background for, as Charles would say, “life in work” and with nature as a “shock absorber.” (http://eamesfoundation.org/eames-house-history)

Recognizing the need, Charles Eames said, is the primary condition for design. Early in their careers together, Charles and Ray identified the need for affordable, yet high-quality furniture for the average consumer — furniture that could serve a variety of uses. For forty years the Eameses experimented with ways to meet this challenge, designing flexibility into their compact storage units and collapsible sofas for the home; seating for stadiums, airports, and schools; and chairs for virtually anywhere. Their chairs were designed for Herman Miller in four materials — molded plywood, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, bent and welded wire mesh, and cast aluminum. The conceptual backbone of this diverse work was the search for seat and back forms that comfortably support the human body, using three dimensionally shaped surfaces or flexible materials instead of cushioned upholstery. An ethos of functionalism informed all of their furniture designs. “What works is better than what looks good,” Ray said. “The looks good can change, but what works, works.” -http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/furniture.html