Construction Innovation

Haworth New Office Furniture System: Rolling Cabinet with Drawers

1985

Work of Art for Project, Office Furniture Prototype

Rolling cabinet made of black lucite and heavy brass castors. Furniture prototype incorporated in the Center for Environmental Structure office.

Created by:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black

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

Drawings

Photographs

SEE ALL Photographs

References

Scientific Research

Strong Centers in all Levels of Scale

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Structure Preserving Transformations

A building can only amount to something as a living thing when the various physical elements which appear in it are profound centers. The dominant feature of the process that is working correctly is that new centers are formed, and ...

Books

The Nature of Order - An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Book Three - A Vision of a Living World 2005

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

The Center for Environmental Structure Publishing, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

No of pages:

697 pp

“A Vision of a Living World”, the third volume of “The Nature of Order” series, presents, for the first time, a full spectrum of Alexander’s and CES built and unbuilt works. The book describes hundreds of buildings, plans, neighborhoods, drawings, ...

Book Chapters

Chapter 14. Construction Elements as Living Centers, 6/ Unfolding Building Details from the Fundamental Process

Publication,

Book title:

The Nature of Order – An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.
Book Three – A Vision of a Living World

Pages:

456-476

Articles

Toward a Personal Workplace: Portfolio of Interiors and a New System of Office Furniture 15/09/1987

Publication, Article

Authors:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black, John Rheinfrank

Published in:

Architectural Record, No. 1501, pp. 130-141

Publisher:

McGraw Hill Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A.