Airbnb founder on the building that inspired him: ‘This is hallowed ground’
telegraph.co.ukhated it.” On the walk back to the Eames office, at 901 Washington Boulevard, Charles asked what she thought of the meal. “I said I didn't like it very much,” she recalls. “And without missing a beat he asked, ‘How would you have done it differently?’” That response typifies the Eames’ relentless curiosity and problem-solving approach to design. “What Charles was saying,” Demetrios explains, “was, if you’re going to complain about something, then you’d better have another way of doing it.”Charles and Ray Eames are among the best-known designers of the 20th century.
They met in 1940 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Charles, who was married to his first wife, Catherine Woermann and working as an architect, was teaching at the academy when Ray-Bernice Kaiser enrolled to further her education in abstract art.
Kaiser offered to help Eames with the graphics for a design competition he was entering with Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American designer best known for his Tulip chairs and Pedestal tables.
A year later, Charles divorced Woermann and married Kaiser.In 1943, the couple formed the Eames Office as an experimental playground for them and their collaborators.
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