As modernists who believed that affordable, mass produced, well-designed furniture and objects for the home were tools that could bring about an environment ripe for social change and betterment, the various works of husband and wife design team Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1989) Eames remain today as examples of an astonishingly unique and fertile breeding ground for some of the classic mid-century modern designs. Born in St. Louis , Charles graduated architecture from Washington University in 1928. Shortly after, he became part of several architecture practices in St. Louis , designing houses in and around the city, as well as two churches in Arkansas . Later, from 1936 to 1940, he would go to Michigan to study at Cranbrook Academy of Arts where he spent his last year as a design teacher. It was in Cranbrook that he met Eero Saarinen, whom he collaborated with on the "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition at the MoMA. Though they had yet to hone their production methods, their curvy armchairs and dining chairs which offered a new method of production by molding a plywood shell in three dimensions with the chairs upholstered over these shells helped them bag the award. It was also in Cranbrook that Charles met Ray whom he eventually married. Sacramento-born Ray studied painting at the Art Students League and the Hans Hoffman School in New York . In 1936, she helped start the radical American Abstract Artists group, lauding avant-garde art and protesting galleries with stringent and traditional policies about what to exhibit. Their work for the Navy wartime effort in 1940 allowed them to explore the new methods of bending plywood as they produced plywood airplane parts and molded leg splints already so close to abstract art that it was no stretch for Ray to customize and exhibit them as such. Applying these techniques to their furniture design, they started turning out series like the "Dining Chair Wood," more popularly known as the "DCW," the "Lounge Chair Wood" and "Lounge Chair Metal," known as "LCW" and "LCM" respectively. The Eames' approach to chair design was to work off of the idea of a shell as the seat, shaped to fit the body so that upholstery was unnecessary. Exploring the use of other media, it was late in the 1940's that they came out with a series of reinforced molded fiberglass shells that could be attached to a number of different bases like the "Eiffel Tower," "Cat's Cradle," and one that would make it a rocking chair. At around 1950, together with a series of wire chairs that were mesh shells on wire rod bases, a modular system of shelving with brightly colored panels ornamented with sliding and pull down doors in fiberglass known as the Eames Storage Unit was released and came with their signature dimpled wood front. A leather upholstered lounge chair and ottoman, one of their most luxurious and expensive pieces, was released in 1956 and came in the form of famous present for the couple's friend Billy Wilder. In the next two decades, their "Aluminum Group" of indoor/outdoor furniture, as well as the popular "Tandem Shell Seating" and airport-designed "Tandem Sling Seating" was released. It was during their collaboration with the company Herman Miller that the Eames couple worked on furniture designs and advertising and showroom design. The 1960's saw the couple focusing on corporate films and exhibits for Westinghouse, Polaroid and IBM. Exhibits like "Mathematica" and the IBM Pavilion for the 1964 World's Fair in New York allowed IBM's rapid technological advancements to be more reachable where featured animated mathematical "peep shows" incorporated a sense of fun not often seen in science presentations. "Think," a multi-image exhibit featured a "People Wall" where dozens of screens in front of tiered risers filled with people was projected, was an innovation set the scene for today's multi-media presentations. From decorators to entertainers, educators to artists, the Eames over several decades in which they were almost constantly working, established a new identity for American interior and graphic design, and conceived an arena for the development of multi-media and corporate design strategy.