“We looked at the program and divided it into the essential elements, which turned out to be thirty-odd. And we proceeded methodically to make one hundred studies of each element. At the end of the hundred studies we tried to get the solution for that element that suited the thing best…. Then we proceeded to break down all logical combinations of these elements, trying to not erode the quality we had gained in the best of the hundred single elements; and then we took those elements and began to search for the logical combinations of combinations, and several of such stages…. And went right on down the procedure. And at the end of that time…we really wept, it looked so idiotically simple we thought we’d sort of blown the whole bit. And [we] won the competition.”
—CHARLES EAMES, furniture designer, from Ralph Caplan, By Design
