Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Precedent: The Eames House

Ok, I honestly don't know how I got this one so wrong. I was so excited! I was sure I'd hit it! It's only for that reason that this makes it on here, I've got no issue with ditching it. But, for the blog - which will remember every false move - here's why I like it:
  1. Standardised. I still find the transformation of whats just an industrial shed into a rich collage amazing.
  2. Creative Space. This to me is the ultimate creative space. Everything is at hand; books, materials, equipment, space, light etc. Maybe all the little trinkets would annoy me a bit though.
  3. Refinement. This houses invites constant refinement. I've always loved your house down at Barwon, and to me its like your 'life project', constantly being refined and modified, walls built or moved, bathrooms cast, furniture accomodated etc. But I had no idea this maintainence was such a burden!
  4. Flexibility. The structural grid is interpreted and interrogated throughout the house, through colour, layout, patterning and furniture. Objects can sit on or off the grid without either being pretentious or appearing intentional.
  5. Landscape. It's nestled in within huge trees, but is of a foreign language and doesn't try and imitate. The landscape is dumbly (but in a good way) introduced into the house just as potplants and ferns.
For a contemporary extension of the ideas of the Eames house, see French architects Lacaton and Vassal. They use off-the-shelf greenhouses and industrial sheds to address the issue of 'space' in low-budget housing.
Photos: Charles and Ray Eames, Eames House, 1949-50

3 comments:

martin said...

This would probably have been perfect for us 20 years ago. Then we would have had the energy to put into redefining a space in the way suggested by this idea. Now we want a building that is perfect already and we can just get on with the business of living in it and making Art.

martin said...

When I want to do heavy duty thinking i like to be in a desert environment. Something that is austere, with nothing around me to distract. ie. Namib Desert (Skeleton coast), Lake Hart (near Woomera). So I would be looking for similar qualities in the ideal living environment, nothing there but beauty. I imagine in that our 'stuff' will be magically hidden away in storage areas.

rory said...

ok yeah i get the storage thing, clean thing, the heat thing and the creative space thing, but i'm not ready to abandon the shed altogether... just give me time.