The best home is a joyfully inhabited one – doubly so if its residents are design legends

Designed, constructed and then occupied by the celebrated husband-and-wife US designers Charles and Ray Eames, the Los Angeles building fondly known as the ‘Eames House’ is widely considered a masterpiece of modern architecture. Built in 1949, the house was commissioned as part of an Arts & Architecture magazine initiative encouraging celebrated architects to reimagine affordable, efficient homes in the wake of the Second World War. Today, the Eames House still stands as a museum, inspiring thousands of pilgrimages to its location in the residential Pacific Palisades neighbourhood each year.

The aptly titled short House: After Five Years of Living (1955) captures the Eames House, looking something like a Piet Mondrian painting stretched into three dimensions, as a lived-in space. With appropriately sparse and stylish direction from the Eames themselves, the reflective short is proof positive that the most beautiful home is a joyfully inhabited one – and doubly so if its residents are designers with legendary taste.

©1955 Eames Office LLC. Used by permission of the Eames Office. All rights reserved.