The Organic Armchair was created in 1940/41 as a design for the legendary competition Organic Design in Home Furnishings, launched by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, who were both lecturers at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, at the time, submitted several designs they had created together and were awarded first prizes in two categories. One was in the category ‘Seating for a living room,’ for which they had submitted six designs, the model then denominated as Conversation Chair among them. The jury, consisting of prominent exponents such as Marcel Breuer and Alvar Aalto, acknowledged the technical innovation constituted. Eames and Saarinen for the first time proposed using three-dimensionally moulded plywood shells for their chairs that would provide a large degree of comfort through their ergonomic form alone, without the need for elaborate upholstery. It soon became clear, however, that the chairs would still need significant development to be fit for serial production on an industrial scale. When Charles and Ray Eames moved to California the close collaboration with Saarinen came to an end as well. And it was the Eames’ who continued research on three-dimensional moulding of plywood on their own, achieving groundbreaking success after the end of the war. The Organic Chair’s serial production, meanwhile, only began in 2004, based on one of the few original models from 1941.
