Mies & Eames

1. Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Pavilion 1929

7. “ Every physical element has been distilled to its irreducible essence. The interior is unprecedentedly transparent to the surrounding site, and also unprecedentedly uncluttered in itself. All of the paraphernalia of traditional living –rooms, walls, doors, interior trim, loose furniture, pictures on walls, even personal possessions – have been virtually abolished in a puritanical vision of simplified, transcendental existence. Mies had finally achieved a goal towards which he had been feeling his way for three decades."

12. “In its simplest form architecture is rooted in entirely functional considerations, but it can reach up through all degrees of value to the highest sphere of spiritual existence into the realm of pure art.”

13. The architecture of the house represents the ultimate refinement of Mies van der Rohe’s minimalist expression of structure and space.

30. Mies wanted a complete regularity in the appearance of the building. "structure is spiritual" and "less is more."

31. Following these premises, the Seagram Building is meant to confirm Mies' assertion that when modern industrialized building technology is truthfully expressed, architecture becomes transcendent.

32. He believed that the more a building was pared to its essential structural and functional elements, and the less superfluous imagery is used, the more a building expresses its structure and form.

33. "Skyscrapers reveal their bold structural pattern during construction. Only then does the gigantic steel web seem impressive. When the outer walls are put in place, the structural system, which is the basis of all artistic design, is hidden by a chaos of meaningless and trivial forms... Instead of trying to solve old problems with these old forms we should develop new forms from the very nature of the new problems. We can see the new structural principles most clearly when we use glass in place of the outer walls, which is feasible today since in a skeleton building these outer walls do not carry weight. The use of glass imposes new solutions."

34. R ecognizing 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 .

35. Charles & Ray Eames

36. "What works is better than what looks good," Ray said. "The looks good can change, but what works, works." The aluminum chair's concept formed the basis of the office's 1962 Eames Tandem Sling Seating, an institutional multiple-seating system designed for Washington's Dulles International Airport.

37. T he Eameses' molded-plywood chair was their first attempt to create a single shell that would be comfortable without padding and could be quickly mass-produced

38. The expensive metal-stamped chair was replaced by a low -cost fiberglass reinforced plastic chair.

40. I nspired by trays, dress forms, baskets, and animal traps, the Eames Office investigated bent and welded wire mesh as the basis for furniture designs. The wire-mesh chair, like the fiberglass chair, was a uni-shell design. The shell could be adapted to various base configurations and upholstery types

45. T he Eameses' molded-plywood chair was their first attempt to create a single shell that would be comfortable without padding and could be quickly mass-produced