The Past Shapes The Present, An Astonishing Design Story.

San Francisco, June 2025; as Design Week settles in the sunny streets of the city, a mythical skyscraper speaks again. The Transamerica Pyramid, a tapered silhouette in the heart of the financial district, is preparing to host an exhibition like no other. Past as Prologue, presented by the Eames Institute, pays tribute to the last decade of the creations of the famous designer couple Ray and Charles Eames. It is not a simple retrospective, but an immersion in their creative process at a pivotal moment in the history of design. Find out more here in The Past Shapes The Present, An Astonishing Design Story.

Image on the left-hand side © Eames Office, LLC

A few days later and nearly 5,000 kilometres away, in a discreet gallery in New York, another exhibition opened. Formation, by the Italian studio Formafantasma, also questions our relationship to objects, memory and the essential forms of furniture. Two exhibitions, two eras, two looks. However, the same thread connects them: the desire to tell the story of the objects that surround us, and what they say about us.

Image © Eames Office, LLC

Emblematic designers, Ray and Charles Eames, marked history with furniture and 20th-century design, combining beauty, functionality and accessibility.

The exhibition Past as Prologue invites us to go back to between 1968 and 1978, a period when Ray and Charles Eames, already recognised worldwide, chose to perfect their creations rather than reinvent them.

This decade marked a moment of creative maturation for the couple. Their goal was to adapt their iconic models to a changing world.

Citing the example of the Eames Lounge chair, which has become a cult, this emblematic piece, with its inclined and enveloping aesthetic, also evokes the modernism found in some contemporary European designers. Especially with the famous LC4 chaise longue imagined by Charlotte Perriand, in collaboration with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret.

The same desire to combine comfort, modernity and elegance in an object designed to last. American modernism, embodied in particular by the Eames, is part of the continuity of European modernism, of which it shares the fundamental principles: simple and geometric shapes; functionality at the heart of the object; refusal of superfluous ornamentation and interest in mass production and accessibility of design.

A 1969 view into the Eames Office at 901 Washington shows the many projects in development including the Eames Chaise, Soft Pad group, and Loose Cushion armchairs and settee. Image © Eames Office, LLC

Faced with the rise of office work, the beginnings of computerisation and new expectations of comfort, the Eames couple were refining their creations. The world was changing. Materials were evolving. Plywood and fibreglass gave way to injection-moulded plastics, polyurethane and more flexible foams. The chair became lighter, more flexible, and better designed for long days, sitting. The style remained faithful, but the materials aligned with the needs of a changing world.

Ray and Charles Eames. Image Eames Office

The furniture evolved discreetly, but deeply. The furniture, while maintaining its pure and functional lines, becomes more modular, more ergonomic and more durable. These choices reflect the technical and social evolution of the time. Each piece of furniture becomes the reflection of a world in transformation.

“As an often overlooked era of my grandparents’ designs,  it felt imperative to uncover some ephemera that isn’t always highlighted, hence choosing some of their lesser-known pieces.”

Llisa Demetrios, chief curator and granddaughter of Ray and Charles Eames

In the Transamerica Pyramid gallery, the visitor enters a sober and refined universe. In addition to the exhibition itself, The Eames Institute is partnering on two retail spaces within the iconic building. We discover rarely exhibited pieces; archival videos; a curated selection of new and vintage merchandise, including furniture, books and home items; exhibition catalogs; current books on the Eames legacy and playful gift items. Next to the main exhibition, a space called Time Capsule Exhibition reveals the objects found under the building, buried witnesses of a changing era.

Image © Eames Office, LLC

Through Past as Prologue, the public can rediscover the ability of design to adapt without ever betraying its essence. The design is not a fixed memory. It is alive, daring and meaningful. As the title of the exhibition indicates, it is only a prologue.

Ray and Charles Eames showed how beauty can meet the useful, and how design can accompany change without losing its soul. In their desire to make beauty accessible and functional, they laid the foundations of a humanistic design.

This link between past and present is also found in New York, in a completely different language. Entitled Formation, this exhibition focuses on the roots of household furniture. This one, about the Formafantasma duo’ art, explores the furniture archetype from a simple and noble material: cherry wood. Known for their in-depth research on the ecological, social and cultural impacts of design, Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin are interested here in the basics of carpentry.

Details of Floor L Textile, 2024, Cherry Wood, Aluminum, Led, Acrylic, Linoleum. Image Friedman Benda

Each piece of furniture is born from a simple element: the board. From this fundamental unity, forms are drawn, both familiar and new. The design here is not spectacular; it is meditative. He is inspired by discreet but powerful references: the Shakers, Frank Lloyd Wright, and George Nakashima. All defend a refined aesthetic, close to nature, carried by a spiritual and functional dimension.

The Shakers are an American religious group derived from Protestantism; known for their community life, their pacifism, their celibacy and especially their minimalist and functional furniture. Their design is marked by simplicity, utility and craftsmanship, which has influenced modern design.

As for Frank Lloyd Wright, he is a major American architect of the 20th century, famous for having developed organic architecture, seeking to integrate buildings into their natural environment. He has designed emblematic works such as Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He advocated a coherent design between architecture, furniture and decoration.

George Nakashima was an American cabinetmaker and designer of Japanese origin. He is recognised for his artisanal and spiritual approach to woodworking, often left raw and natural, with irregular shapes and sober finishes. He combined Japanese traditions, Zen philosophy and Western modernism in his unique furniture.

Image Friedman Benda

The Italian studio chose restraint as a language. The furniture is accompanied by textiles evoking the silent gestures of domestic crafts, often female, long invisible in the history of design. The light, diffused by rectangular panels, recalls the screens that punctuate our modern lives. Everything here invites us to reflect on our relationship with objects, not as simple tools, but as silent companions of our daily lives.

Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi. Image Courtesy Rubelli, Living Corriere

“Not to mimic nor reject history, but instead to expand upon it”

Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin

Formafantasma, explores how furniture can carry within it the memory of ancient gestures and forgotten know-how and reminds us that each object carries silent stories.

Table Lamp. Image Friedman Benda

These two exhibitions share a fundamental point. Both consider design as a living language. A language that not only follows trends, but questions uses, materials, stories and legacies. Whether it is perfecting a chair to meet the needs of a changing society or deconstructing domestic forms to reveal their foundations, design acts as a revealer of the world.

In these two universes, separated by time but united by intention, design becomes a form of writing. A writing made of materials, lines, textures, but also stories. These stories are read in the folds of a textile, in the curve of a file, in the choice of a material. Thus, these two exhibitions propose a vision of design as a transmission tool. They show that our interiors are never neutral. They are shaped by social choices, ecological issues, and personal narratives. And behind each piece of furniture, every material, hides a story to listen to.

Formation and Past as Prologue tell us about yesterday, to better illuminate today.

If you enjoyed reading The Past Shapes The Present, An Astonishing Design Story., why not read If Cane and Magic Meet: New Mythical Furniture Rise here.

.Cent Magazine London. Be Inspired; Get Involved

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