The Eames House, Revisited

The Eames House has influenced generations of designers, and it is currently being revisited at Milan Design Week through a new exhibition exploring the residential work of Charles Eames and Ray Eames — and how those ideas continue to shape design today.

Built in 1949 in Pacific Palisades, California, it remains one of the most studied homes ever constructed. This April, its legacy is the subject of a major new exhibition at the Triennale di Milano during Milan Design Week, exploring the full breadth of Charles and Ray Eames’ residential work. At the centre of it all is something few expected: a new modular building system.

The Eames Pavilion System, developed by the Eames Office in partnership with Spanish manufacturer Kettal, is a prefabricated, kit-of-parts structure that realises one of the Eameses’ longest-held ambitions – because while most people know them through their furniture, the Eames House was never meant to be a singularity. It emerged from the Case Study Houses project, a programme exploring how prefab homes could be made accessible to almost anyone. The ambition was always universal.

Three years of archival research, led by former Vitra chief design officer Eckart Maise, uncovered a consistent thread running through all of the Eameses’ residential work: a preoccupation with modularity and off-the-shelf components. Among the discoveries was the Supermarket House, a self-initiated Eames research project into wood-framed modular housing designed to be shipped and assembled on site.