Charles Eames, who worked always with his wife and partner Ray, was the most innovative and broadly-based of American designers. Known primarily for his furniture and his explorations of film and photographic media, his own house (Pacific Palisades, California 1949) was one of his few experiments with architecture.
Its constructions was inspired by the Case Study programme which 'California Arts And Architecture' magazine propagated in the 1940s and 1950s. Assembled entirely from standardised industrial components, and composed with a sensitive irregularity which reflected Eames' interest in Japanese wooden-framed traditional architecture, it is sited at the top of a gently inclined meadow, behind a protective row of mature eucalyptus trees which filter light into an interior where the furniture and judiciously selected objects form a significant part of the architectural ensemble.
'Architecture In Detail' is a superbly photographed and technically informative series of monographs which embraces a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, drawn predominantly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each sixty-page volume contains a lucid text by a respected author; a sequence of large-format, high-quality colour and black and white photographs; a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details; and a complete bibliography and chronology, thus making these books the definitive work on the subject. They are essential purchases for enthusiasts, practitioners and students alike.
