Record

Haworth New Office Furniture System: Recording the Layout of Large Common Areas and Work-units

01/01/1986

Design Matters, Notes & Sketches

One page of a preliminary layout plan of a typical multistory office building with notations on square footage and number of people per room. Followed by four groups of illustrations of various office spaces studied experimentally and aiming towards the creation of a coherent geometric character for the new office spaces to be laid out by the users; with various notes included .

Authors:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Content of

Project

New System of Office Furniture for Haworth, Inc. 1985 to 1986

Holland, MI, U.S.A.

Office Furniture, Designed , Furniture prototypes built by C.E.S.

Client:

Haworth Manufacturing, Inc. - Tom Hench

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black, Mark Brinner

Design and construction process:

Theree design principles guided the development of the project: 1) Layout of the personal work space by their users in order to meet their own personal needs; this process is achievable through the use of a computer program developed at C.E.S. which carries a worker through the design process. 2) Use of flexible manufacturing techniques, which allow individualisation of each piece of furniture, without increasing costs; the purpose of this feature is to eliminate the modularity that is part and parcel of current systems. 3) The basis of design is the real human needs and desires, not on the latest trend.

Project stages:

Pattern language for project by C.E.S. Generic rules for office layout process Use of full scale mock-ups Fabrication of full size furniture prototypes by C.E.S. Design Development drawings done after fabrication

The new system of office furniture, intended for mass production, was designed in such a way as to be capable of creating the environment for millions of workers, in an endless variety of specific configurations. The line of furniture provided ...

Contents

Records

SEE ALL Records

References

Scientific Research

Unfolding of Wholeness in Large Buildings by Successive Transformations of the Space

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Structure Preserving Transformations

Large building are not easy to design and keep the feeling of intimay in them. The way a large building can be given this quality is by succeeding in the creation of living centers throughout its fabric. The profusion and ...

Drawings

Haworth New Office Furniture System: Presentation Drawing - Floor plan 01/03/1986

Architectural Design, Project, Presentation Drawing, Floor Plan

Designers:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Medium:

Original on Vellum

Size:

24"x36"

Scale:

3/16"=1'

Floor plan of a typical multistory office building, which illustrates the geometric character of the new space conception. The building is assumed to be 180-feet by 118-feet, which is typical for a contemporary high-rise building, and the floor contains space ...