02/10/2026
Five Models by Charles and Ray Eames: Part 5
In this series, we explore how models shaped the way Charles and Ray thought, designed, and collaborated. More than representations, these models were tools for generating ideas, testing space, and telling stories.
In 1975, Charles and Ray Eames were invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to envision a new kind of information center—one that would help visitors navigate the museum’s vast collections through emerging computer and videodisc technologies. Conceived as a proposed wing extending into Central Park, the project reimagined the museum as an interconnected system of knowledge rather than a sequence of isolated galleries.
The Eames Office developed a one-inch-scale model to explore this idea, organizing the ground floor around an Information Hall that combined a walk-through historical timeline, collection highlights, computer-based retrieval stations, video kiosks, and spaces for film, lectures, and conversation. The proposal was presented through a study film blending live-action footage, animation, and still photography of the model, demonstrating how visitors might move through—and actively engage with—the museum’s collections in new ways.
The model’s remarkably realistic qualities embodied a forward-looking, mid-1970s vision of how art could be experienced through emerging media.
📷: © Eames Office, LLC.
