The Eames House

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-em-eames-home-restoration-20130519,1681897.print.story
Hello Everyone:

Before I forget, you can check out my boards on pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/glamtroy
First, a quick update on the events in Turkey.  Media coverage, at least in the United States, has been moved to the back pages.  In the meantime, the movement to save Gezi Park continues to grow into a platform for old social grievances.  Sometimes, preservation can have this effect.  What starts out as one thing, grows into something greater.  This doesn't happen too often in the United States, where saving a park becomes a national forum for redressing past social hurts.  But here we have it. The efforts to save the park have exposed all manner of social divides bringing to the forefront the biggest one of all, Muslim versus Secular Turkey.  Religion never seems to be far from the social mix in the Middle East.  I suppose it's a testament to the dominent role it plays in all aspects of life.  For now, the story continues to have legs.  We'll see where those legs take us.  Now onto today's topic, conservation efforts at the Eames House.

Unlike the events in Turkey, conservation efforts at the Eames House aren't causing wide-spread social unrest.  In fact, it's barely causing a ripple of interest unless you're a preservationist.  Why should anyone care about this house located in Pacific Palisades, California.  Well, it was quite novel for its time.  It's architect/owners Charles and Rae (a woman) Eames took a rather creative approach to crafting a space for themselves and their family.  Originally known as Case Study House #8 (hmm this gives me an idea for a future blog), the Eames House was one of about two dozen homes built as part of the Case Study House Program.  The program began in the mid-1940s and continued through the early sixties.  It was headed by John Entenza, the publishers of Arts and Architecture magazine.  The challenge to architects was to build a home designed to express a person's life in the modern world. (http://www.eamesfoundation.org/eames-house-history/) The program attracted notable architects as: Charles Eames, Pierred Koening, Eero Saarinen, and Richard Neutra.  Each of the participating architects contributed their vision of what a well-designed, mass-produced house for the average American should look like and how it should work.  The houses were to built and furnished using materials and techniques learned from the experiences of the Second World War.  Each home would have a real or hypothetical client that the architect would have to consider.  The Eameses proposed a home for a married couple that worked in design and graphic arts, whose children were out of the house.  They wanted a home that made no demands for itself and serve as backdrop for "life in work" and nature as the "shock absorber."

Presently, the house is at the forefront of the struggle to preserve well-known modern buildings around the world.  Side note, in the last chapter of my thesis, I spend time discussing Japan's efforts to preserve their modernist legacy.  I focus on the Nakajin Capsule Hotel and how the Japan Institute of Architects and architects around the world are rallying to save this early seventies modernist hotel.  The preservation activities at the Nakajin Capsule Hotel are a microcosm of attitudes and approaches architects and preservationists are taking in considering the architecture of the post-war period.  According to Susan MacDonald the head of the Getty Conservation Institute 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."

The timing of this project couldn't be better.  The Eames House Foundation (http://www.eamesfoundation.org), whose duty it is to preserve the house and the designer's creative legacy, asked the GCI for assistance just as the preservation initiative was beginning to take form.  By a 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 replacement of the original floor.  The floor tiles were brittle and full of cancerous asbestos and the adhesive that held them to the concrete floor was wrecked because of moisture seepage.  The difficulty became finding an adhesive that wouldn't be so toxic and asbestos-free tiles that resembled the originals.  Obviously a trip to Home Depot was out of the question.  In the meantime, the furniture and contents of the room were the highlight of LACMA's critically acclaimed and hit show "Living in a Modern Way: California Design, 1930-1965," didn't travel to the just closed at the National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan.  The show was part of the Getty's original "Pacific Standard Time" exhibitions.

The Eames Foundation approached the GCI for general guidance as well as specific advice, according to Lucia Dewey Atwood, a member of the board and granddaughter of Charles and Rae Eames.  The situation is unusual because it's not just the structure that being preserved, it's also the contents.  One real difficulty is the light streaming through the windows, designed to produce an indoor-outdoor effect, inevitably damages sensitive building materials, fabrics, and artwork.  I've seen this first hand in an inventory I did of the remaining furniture from the Freeman House (1924) by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Further, it isn't just the environment inside the house, it's also the environment outside the house.  There's a marine environment, so conservationists have to monitor the daily fluctuations of temperatures as well as wind, temperature, humidity, and light.

The house has been placed in nomination as a National Historic Landmark and the form can be viewed at http://www.nps.gov/nhl/designations/samples/CA/Eames.pdf.  The thirty-five page document details the contributions the house has made to the advancement of American culture in the post-World War II years.  The preservation of this house and others post-war modernist buildings is becoming very crucial as time progresses.  It's not just landmark single family homes  that deserve our attention but also commercial buildings.  These post-war masterpieces were built during a time when the world was rapidly changing thanks to the optimistic mood of the United States following World War II.  The Eames House is great example of accessible high-quality mass housing that were derived from the material and techniques developed during the war.  If anything, it's a great space to be in.