Architects Charles Eames and his wife, Ray, fearlessly tackled any design-related task: furniture, films, toys, books, prefab buildings, exhibitions and more. Early on, Charles worked as an architectural set designer at MGM and Ray worked as a graphic designer for an architecture magazine. During World War II they produced 5,000 plywood leg splints for the U.S. Navy. Their collaboration lasted from 1941 until Charles' death in 1978; they lived the 20th-century ideal of a married couple working together adventurously and joyfully.

At the Arthur Ross Gallery, an exhibition of toys designed by the Eameses is slight but well worth a visit just to be reminded of the protean ingenuity of this team of archetypical modernist designers. With two short videos and a couple of hands-on interactive displays, "Whimsical Works" is especially suitable for younger kids. The Eameses' works for children are a far cry from the glitz and blitz of today's Transformers, Barbies and video games. Intended to foster creativity and an understanding of engineering, the Eameses' toys may at first seem so low-key that contemporary kids wouldn't immediately recognize them as playthings.

Though these toys are no longer on the market, some of the Eameses' furniture, particularly chairs of plywood, metal, plastic or fiberglass designed for the Herman Miller company and its partner Vitra, have become iconic. The couple's lighthearted, stripped-down aesthetic is clearly linked to the Bauhaus idea that furniture could be produced from inexpensive materials. Simplicity, honesty and economy were the Eameses' watchwords.

Their designs epitomize modularity: the concept that identical units can be assembled in different ways to produce different results. We see this principle clearly in the House of Cards (1952), presented in the Ross show in two sizes. Each interlocking card or module has six notches cut into it allowing children at the time (and gallery visitors today) to easily build rectilinear and arched structures. One side is white and decorated with a large asterisk; the other side features a photograph, different for each card. Some are patterns, like veined marble or checkerboards; others include flowers, people or butterflies.

Another example of modularity is The Toy (1951), a collection of dowels, bright-colored plasticized paper panels and pipe-cleaner fasteners that allowed kids to build sizeable multicolored structures. Sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co., it could be used to build a temporary outdoor structure, an indoor space divider or a fanciful winged contraption.

The two films shown in the Ross exhibition are about toys, a topic the Eameses took seriously. Toccata for Toy Trains (1957) is 14 nostalgic minutes of various trains and suitably scaled accessories. The eye of the camera is selective, allowing us to experience a return to the deliberately narrowed focus of childhood imagination. Occasional glimpses of giant hands and Charles' voice remind us of the charm of vintage toys.

The couple collected tops from all over the world, including China, India, Japan and Mexico, and borrowed more to build a cast of 123 different ones for the film Tops (1969). Again the eye of the camera is brought down to the level of a toy and we are immersed in a sort of ballet of tops pirouetting to a composition by Elmer Bernstein.

This six-and-a-half-minute film demonstrates the sophistication of the Eameses' notion of modularity, not just as a manufacturing or anthropological concept, but as an intellectual one. The film was used by a professor at MIT to illustrate the motion of planetary bodies. In the gallery, a display of vintage tops from the film is presented in one vitrine. A similar-sized table at eye level for smaller visitors invites us to spin modern tops.

The Eameses invented a Kaleidoscope (1959) composed of mirrors that reflect wedge-shaped modules of the real world and used it to make a film about their studio. This is projected on the floor of the Ross Gallery. Visitors watch sitting in colorful Eames office chairs.

This show, which is accompanied by two well-designed free publications, was organized by University of Pennsylvania students, based on a two-semester-long research project involving a number of experts and institutions. I'm giving it an A.

Whimsical Works: The Playful Designs of Charles and Ray Eames Through Sept. 11, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania 220 S. 34th St. 215-898-2083