Charles Eames & Eero Saarinen

Charles Eames, born 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, graduated architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and opened his own office along with Charles M. Gray in 1930. In 1935 he opened another architectural firm with Robert T. Walsh. After receiving a fellowship in 1938 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, he moved to Michigan and in the following years assumed a teaching position in the design department. In 1940 Eames became head of the department of industrial design at Cranbrook.

Eero Saarinen, born 1910 in Kirkkonummi, Finland, son of architect Eliel Saarinen, studied sculpture in 1929 and 1930 at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris before studying  architecture at Yale University in New Haven until 1934. A Yale fellowship enabled him to travel to Europe. In 1936 he returned to the United States, collaborated with his father’s studio, and also taught at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills. It was here that Eero Saarinen met Charles Eames. Along with they experimented on new furniture forms and realized the first designs for furniture made of moulded plywood.