An Eames to stand on

Prosthetic devices -- in unfortunately high demand in the United States these days, in large part because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- can generally be divided into two camps: the purely utilitarian (metallic, quasi-robotic) and the mimetic (those that aspire to resemble the leg, arm, or foot they replace). Both styles "generally lack humanity, style and grace," concluded the young designer Joanna Hawley, a 2007 Carnegie Mellon grad; and in some cases they can even make their owners depressed. So she set out to re-imagine this crucial piece of therapeutic technology.

Hawley's chief inspirations were the chairs and furniture of Charles and Ray Eames, the mid-20th-century modernists who made deft use of curved wood forms and, often, the contrast between hard exteriors and soft interiors. She had a male-oriented prosthetic in mind from the start: Another design lodestar was Steve McQueen, perhaps yanked into the conceptual scheme because guys who have had their legs blown off aren't necessarily Eames-knowledgable aesthetes. The leg had to look strong -- though whether it succeeds will be in the eye of the beholder:

Via Architectural Scholar and Hawley's website. She's currently based in Bethesda, Md. -- not too far from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, coincidentally or not.