Eames Ecology

Between 1966 and 1969 Charles and Ray Eames and the Eames Office worked with Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates (KRJDA) to design a new aquarium in Washington D.C. The project was commissioned by Stuart Udall, who was United States Secretary of the Interior between 1961-69, and a keen advocate for the environment. Although unrealised, the National Fisheries Center and Aquarium project epitomised the Eames Office’s action-research approach by integrating science research, audience-centred museology, pedagogical thinking, architecture and design. With the stated goal of encouraging people to preserve and protect the environment through a greater understanding of the ‘delicate balance of natural ecology’ and its conservation, the project represents both a broad shift in public consciousness about the environment as well as a more sharply articulated set of values driving work in the Eames Office in the 1960s. The KRJDA / Eames Office proposal influenced subsequent aquaria designs (e.g. National Aquarium, Baltimore, 1981, designed by Cambridge Seven Architects) and is pivotal in the history of the Eames Office when considering their work from the perspective of ecology and environmental history.

Much has been written in popular and academic publications about Charles and Ray Eames, principally in relation to design and modernism, film and mediatised environments, and the Cold War. This project will critically evaluate the work of Eames Office through case studies such as the unrealised Aquarium and the pioneering, influential film Powers of Ten (1968, 1977), to situate key projects and philosophies within burgeoning counter-cultural and ecological concerns of the 1960s and 1970s. My research will deepen this understanding and offer a critical reading counter to the common perception of the Eameses as establishment figures embedded in post-war consumer and corporate America and disconnected from the cultural and political backdrop of late twentieth century environmentalism.

My doctoral research is within the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London. The project is enabled by a concurrent research fellowship in collaboration with the Charles & Ray Eames Foundation and builds on the research I undertook between 2013 and 2016 to develop my exhibition and publication, The World of Charles and Ray Eames.