The World of Charles and Ray Eames

Complex and difficult exhibition at the Barbican looking at the life and work of Charles and Ray Eames.

I admit I came to this show with very little knowledge of the Eames’s. I knew about the chair designs but that was it and I loved the section on the development of the different chairs. I hadn’t realised the original techniques were developed during the Second World War for glider parts and leg splints! I loved the displays of chairs with many rare and unique examples.

I hadn’t realised they had also designed house and there were good sections on the two houses they designed for Art and Architecture Magazine, one for themselves and one for the editor. There were nice scale models and phots of both houses.

More difficult, although interesting, were the sections on their work to get ideas across such as their displays for the IBM Pavilion at the World Fair in 1964. We are so used to multi-screen delivery of information now that this did not feel innovative but I guess this is the first example of a more imaginative way of putting forward information. Odd that something that was about innovate ways of showing information became rather dry in the telling here.

Closes 14 February 2016.

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