The maxim Design is for living shaped a widespread shift in design furniture during the 1940s and 1950s. It was a revolution of form, an exciting visual language that signaled a new age and a fresh start - and two of its prime movers were Charles Eames.

Charles Eames was the new look in furniture design. Lean and modern. Sleek, sophisticated and simple. Beautifully functional.

Yet Charles Eames and Ray Eames created more than a "look" with their bent plywood lounge chair and lounge chair ottomann or molded fiberglass seating. They had ideas about making a better world, one in which things were designed to fulfill the practical needs of ordinary people and bring greater simplicity and pleasure to our lives.

The Eameses adventurously pursued new ideas and forms with a sense of "serious fun." Yet, it was rigorous discipline that allowed them to achieve perfection of form and mastery over materials.

As Charles Eames noted about the molded plywood Lounge Chair, "Yes, it was a flash of inspiration," he said, "a kind of 30-year flash." Combining imagination and thought, art and science, Charles and Ray Eames created some of the most influential expressions of 20th century design furniture that remains stylish, fresh and functional today.

And they didn't stop with furniture design. The Eameses also created a highly innovative "case study" house in response to a magazine contest.

They made films, including a seven-screen installation at the 1959 Moscow World's Fair, presented in a dome designed by Buckminster Fuller.

They designed showrooms, invented toys and generally made the world a more interesting place to be.

As the most important exponents of organic design, Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated how good design can improve quality of life and human understanding and knowledge.