Eames: The Architect & The Painter Page #12

helped to bring IBM into

the Eames Office stables.

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But it was not expertise

that made Charles and Ray

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indispensible to

the rapidly growing company.

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WURMAN:
You sell your expertise,

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WURMAN:
You sell your expertise,

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you have a limited repertoire.

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You sell your ignorance,

it's an unlimited repertoire.

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He was selling his ignorance

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and his desire to learn

about a subject.

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And the journey...

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of him not knowing to knowing...

was his work.

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FRANCO:
Over two decades,

Charles and Ray would complete

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dozens of projects,

large and small, for IBM.

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But perhaps the most bold was

their pavilion

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for the 1964 New York

World's Fair,

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a 1.2- Acre experimental space

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celebrating the role

of computers in everyday life.

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ASHBY:
I was drawing the stuff

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as fast as he

could conjure it up,

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and they came up with this idea

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of putting that theater

up on top of these trees.

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And so I knew they were going to

have these plungers

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going into the ground...

they are going to move,

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you know,

400 people up on this ramp.

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And I knew, as a designer,

I knew I was going to

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have to figure out some way

to make all that happen.

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And he's just so excited

about this thing.

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And I'm just standing there

like that.

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And I said,

"Charles, this is just nuts."

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And he says, "Yeah, and no one

had told us not to do it."

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FRANCO:
For the show in Moscow,

they had used seven screens.

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But at the IBM Pavilion,

there were 22.

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CAPLAN:
Charles was very big on

making people feel welcome.

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You don'tjust get them in

an auditorium and show the film.

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You have a host.

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But, uh, itwas very hard.

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Everything you said not only had

to be memorized and rehearsed,

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but it had to be timed,

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so when you pointed

to this screen,

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what you were talking about

appeared on this screen.

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And the same with that screen

and all the others.

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Butthe problem was,

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the host

had a nervous breakdown.

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FRANCO:
As Charles and Ray's

reputation

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as visual communicators grew,

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so did their list

of corporate clients.

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MAN:
N is for...

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SINGERS:

j& Navigation equipment j&

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j& Network protectors j&

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j& Nuclear plant control j&

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j& Nuclear reactor plants j&

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j& For surface ships

and submarines j&

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FRANCO:
Westinghouse,

Boeing, and Polaroid

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all trusted the Eames Office

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to solve their problems.

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When the Office was hired

by Alcoa

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to show off the uses

of aluminum,

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they built a solar-powered

Do-Nothing Machine,

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which did exactly that.

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SUSSMAN:
That was

in the golden years,

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when the heads of corporations

would speak,

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a chair away from the designer.

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So that if you needed

to talk to somebody,

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you talked

to the decision maker.

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You didn't talk to a manager

who talked to a director

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who talked to a chief director

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who talked to a vice president

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who talked to

a senior vice president

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who talked to

an executive vice president

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who was allowed to talk to God.

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SELIGSOHN:
Almost never

was there a dissenting voice.

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We trusted his decision making

entirely.

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So his freedom to do

and to explain

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and to conceive and execute

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was almost unparalleled.

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BEEBE:
They didn't have

contracts.

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They had a handshake.

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All those huge projects

were done on a handshake.

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"We're going to give you

the best product,

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butwe can't tell you

what it's going to cost."

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And for IBM

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and for Polaroid,

and for Herman Miller,

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it was okay.

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FRANCO:
And for Charles,

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these gentlemen's agreements

went both ways.

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ASHBY:
The budget for

"Mathematica" was $150,000.

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It actually ended up

costing $300,000,

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and Charles paid

for the $150,000

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that itwent over budget.

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So the whole thing

about what things cost

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and trying to keep it

within the budget

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and meet the clients,

he didn't care about...

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