When the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity released renderings of its new museum last week, it aimed to show how a museum campus could encapsulate the legacy of the 20th century’s most famous design couple, Charles and Ray Eames. The architectural project—helmed by museum design heavyweight Herzog & de Meuron, along with local firm EHDD and landscape architecture firm Field Operations—is meant to be more a celebration of the Eameses’ philosophies and ideas than an Eames theme park. 

“We try to ask as frequently as possible, ‘What can only happen here?’” says John Cary, the institute’s founding president and CEO.

The institute, a nonprofit charity founded in 2019 to advance the legacy of Ray and Charles, joins an existing constellation of entities dedicated to the couple’s work, including the Eames Foundation (established in 2004) and the Eames Office, which oversees the furniture line. The new museum design, an adaptive reuse of an 88.5-acre site in Novato, California, will transform a warehouse and office originally built in 1964. 

The architectural concept is just one example of the Eames Institute seeking to channel the ideals and vision of the couple, including their “best for the most with the least” axiom, and a focus on mid-century aesthetics and the repurposing of industrial materials.

The release of the renderings has also brought up some uncomfortable recent dialogues about how someone in the institute’s orbit has—or has not—reflected what many consider the key values of the Eames name: anti-elitist, democratic design for everyone, and a fostering of international dialogue and multiculturalism.

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