Just announced: The opening of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, a combination museum/learning center "that aims to bring the lessons of Ray and Charles Eames to those looking to solve today's most challenging issues," the organization writes.

Curated by archivist Llisa Demetrios (pictured above; Ray and Charles were her grandparents), the new nonprofit is tucked away on Eames Ranch, a working farm in Petaluma, California. The facilities, which include a wood and metal shop, will host exhibitions, live events and programming, and they've already got some fantastic online content on their site (scroll down for a description/links).

Thus far they've got two design-related exhibits online: "Plywood During the War," which covers the Eameses foray into bent plywood (and goes into more detail about the "Kazam! Machine"), and "Form Follows Formulation," which tells the rollercoaster story of the 12-year journey the Eameses undertook to arrive at their game-changing glass fiber reinforced plastic chair shells.

Both of those links are well worth the click and, importantly, cover how the Eameses frequently encountered failure in the studio, but never gave up and kept plugging away until they found success. As one example of a manufacturing challenge they faced:

So how did they solve it? I won't spoil it; read about it here.

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.

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