Test your design IQ
MANILA, Philippines - Who is the influential 20th century American designer responsible for iconic buildings like the Eames House and the Enteza House in Pacific Palisades?
Born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri to a railway security officer who was a keen amateur photographer. His father’s early death prompted the young boy to work part-time as a laborer in a steel factory where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture and also first entertained the idea of becoming an architect.
He studied architecture briefly at the Washington University in St. Louis on a scholarship, and in 1930 began his on architectural practice with Charles Gray and later Walter Pauley.
Influenced by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, who invited him to study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design department.
In order to apply for the Architecture and Urban Planning Program, he defined an area of focus — the St. Louis Waterfront. Together with Eliel’s son Eero, he designed prize-winning furniture for New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s “Organic Designs in Home Furnishings” competition. Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding that he would develop in many molded plywood products, including besides chairs and furniture, splints and stretchers for the US Navy during World War II.
In 1941, he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, and they moved to Los Angeles, California, where they would live for the rest of their lives. In the late 1940s, as part of Arts and Architecture magazine’s case study program, they designed and built the groundbreaking Eames House, a steel structure with sliding walls and windows.
He designed several covers for the landmark magazine, Arts & Architecture, and in the late 1940s created several textile designs, two of which, Crosspatch and Sea Things, were produced by Schiffer Prints, a company that also produced textiles of Salvador Dali and Frank Lloyd Wright.
In the 1950, the couple continued their work in architecture and modern furniture design, pioneering in innovative technologies such as the plywood, fiberglass, plastic resin chairs and wire mesh chairs designed for Herman Miller. Among the many important designs were the molded plywood Dining Chair Wood (DCW) and DCM (Dining Chair Metal) with a plywood seat; the Lounge Chair in 1956; the Aluminum Group Furniture (1958); the Chaise designed for his friend film director Billy Wilder in 1968; the playful Do Nothing Machine (1957); an early solar energy experiment; and a number of toys.
He died on August 21, 1978. On June 17, 2008, the US Postal Service released 16 stamps celebrating the couple’s designs.
* * *
Last week’s question: Who is the Australian-born, UK-based chef best known for celebrating great Japanese cuisine as former head chef of Nobu London. He is known for mixing Japanese food with foie gras?
Answer: Scott Hallsworth
Winner: Joella Abando, Paranaque City
