The Chair Room at SFMOMA

We were in SF a few weeks ago and stopped by the sfmoma (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). The lobby itself was art, as is the case with lots of museums around the world. You don't actually have to go and see the exhibits to have an architecturally good time.

Similarly, the first time I went to the Getty in LA (the one on the hill, not the one on the water), I spent the whole day outside looking at the buildings, never once venturing inside to look at the art. And further similarly, at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris I tended to ignore the art inside (OK, not really), but instead kept saying to myself, hey this used to be a train station!

So here at sfmoma, I said, hey that's a cool information desk!

And whoa, look up!

And alongside the left wall of the lobby was a bench! This bench:

Anyway, into the museum!

One of the first things encountered was The Chair Room. A room of 11 chairs arranged in circle. A room of 11 pieces of wood art that serve the additional purpose of supporting your behind. A room of 11 modern chairs from modern designers from around the world from the 1930's to the present. Here they are:

Gerrit Rietveld, Zig-zag chair, 1934

Alvar Aalto, Armchair, model 31, 1931-32

Charles and Ray Eames, LCW, 1945

Nathan Lerner, Chair in a Box chair, 1947

Ray Komai, Chair, model 939, 1949

J.B. Blunk, Invisible Presence, 1962

Marc Newsom, Wood chair, 1988

Fernando and Humberto Campana, Favela chair, 1991

Frank Gehry, Cross-check armchair, 1992

Mark Naden, Topos chair, 2003

Maarten Baas, Zig-zag chair (Rietveld), from Where There's Smoke, 2004

It's fascinating that the collection of chairs comes full circle (literally, with the arrangement of chairs on a circular platform), with the Rietveld chair sitting next to the Baas chair. They're almost exactly alike, only with Baas putting his burnt signature on his (again literally, a burned cherrywood chair).

Yeah, I could've come away from this being all inspired to do chairs. Particularly chairs as an homage to these, like some sort of plywood curvy piece in the style of that fabulous Topos chair, or even a melange of scraps type of chair like the Favela. But I ended up coming away from this thinking, I'm gonna make the bench in the lobby.

Yup, the third picture above. It turned out they had dozens (if not hundreds) of these benches throughout the facility, mostly for use while resting in front of a large painting/sculpture/installation.

And I said to myself, I'm gonna go home and make one of those. Right away. It's now in progress. Lots of gluing of lots of parts in multiple steps 'cause I have a finite number of clamps in the shop. A post detailing the finished bench will be posted soon. Since it's a pseudo-slatted bench, it'll be part of my ongoing Nelson series of benches.

So the moral of the story: the next time you're in your favorite museum, ignore the art. Check out the other stuff that's in the building. Oh yeah, and if this museum happens to be the sfmoma, check out the chair room.

The Eames House

Yes, I like Eames furniture. And yes, I admit I had no idea their house was in Pacific Palisades until a few months ago. And yes, I further admit that two years ago I was as ignorant as they come regarding anything that the Eames' ever did regarding furniture, architecture, film, style, life, etc.

In my former life I was a high end audio/video installation professional. In other words, I played with rich peoples' expensive blinky lighted (with buttons and switches) toys. 'Cause he who dies with the most expensive blinky lighted (with buttons and switches) toys wins. And he who has the biggest plasma screen hung on a wall can definitely compensate for shortcomings in other areas. I'm referring to a certain loud-mouthed former NFL wide receiver who will not be named, who just had to own a monstrous 103" behemoth. But I digress.

Anyway, there was a home theater installation I worked on a while back where the guy (not the aforementioned NFL player, but another rich guy with lots of toys) had a cool projector, a bigass screen, and a gagillion watts of speaker amplification in a dedicated theater space on top of the garage. For seating in this home theater, he had a fleet of Eames Lounge Chairs with Ottomans. By 'fleet' I mean at least a dozen of each.

Of course back then I didn't know what I was resting my grubby shoes on, and thought they were just nifty looking matching comfy ottomans with nifty looking matching comfy chairs. They were probably newer repros, but who knows? This guy was oozing overflowingly with wealth that he probably could have gone out and procured a dozen rosewood originals.

The point is that I just didn't know what I was experiencing when basking in the glory of that fleet of fabulous furniture.

Fast forward a few years and after my wife has educated me significantly in the lexicon of MCM, and here we are at the Eames House. Yup, right there on Chautauqua, just a few hundred yards up from PCH. I must've driven up that street dozens of times during my career as an installer, never knowing that right out the truck window there were four (count 'em four) case study houses: Eames, Entenza, West (Walker), and a Neutra.

A few months ago we were watching the second disc of the Eames films collection, the piece entitled House. And then I said, hey I'll google that and see what happens. And yes indeed, this is what I found: http://www.eamesfoundation.org/index.html and it's available for visitation. And we took a visit, just three weeks ago. The only catch is you can't take pictures of the inside.

What was interesting was the little conversation we had with the friendly docent at the door who was somewhat surprised that we're local and from LA. She told us that the majority of the visitors come from out of country and it's rare when a local comes by. Hmm, a comment on the not-so-enthusiastic state of architectural/historical interest among Los Angeles residents?

And during a leisurely stroll through the vast open space in front of the house, we came across some Tonka trucks, seemingly frozen in time. They probably had not been moved since forever as the rust indicated. You could just picture the Eames children (like in the House movie), running around the grounds, then moving some dirt with the Tonka trucks.