‘What does the Eames House teach us about conservation, care and resilience over time?’

Today, visitors can view the famous living room from the outside, through glazing. The home began its life as Case Study 8 in the Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study House programme, launched by editor and designer John Entenza. During its lifetime, the house became something of a set promoting the Eameses’ work and lifestyle, as demonstrated in Julius Shulman’s photographs of the couple for Life magazine.

Far from a showroom, the Eames House was a functional home, with a mezzanine level accessed via a spiral staircase and small kitchen on the ground floor. Alison and Peter Smithson, writing in a 1966 issue of Architectural Design, noted that despite the light appearance of the house – it is, in essence, a glazed steel-frame box – it is ‘stoutly built, and equipped to bourgeois standards’.

Visitors cannot currently access the mezzanine level of the main house, which makes room for a child’s bedroom and a main bedroom next to it.

After a temporary closure following the wildfires, the newly rebranded Charles and Ray Eames Foundation, which is tasked with preserving the house, opted to open the studio building to the public. Tours now take visitors into the heart of the Eameses’ creative practice.