Correspondence

Haworth New Office Furniture System: Letter introducing an in-house sketch of the “Pattern Language for a New Generation of Office Furniture”

05/05/1985

Patterns for Project

Sender:

Christopher Alexander, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Recipient:

Tom Hench, John, Ed, Greg, Haworth Inc., Holland, MI, U.S.A.

Medium:

Letter

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 ...

References

Scientific Research

Project Specific Pattern Languages - Specificity and Generality of Pattern Languages

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Pattern Languages in Practice

A shared pattern language in a project acts as the generic system which gives the power to the smaller local acts to form a whole. Within the process of making a project, every individual act of building differentiates space. However, ...

Reports

Haworth New Office Furniture System: Pattern Language for a New Generation of Office Furniture 01/05/1985

Project, Project Report

Authors:

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

34-page in-house sketch of a Pattern Language with 64 patterns structured in two groups: Group One “The Character and Layout of Offices” and Group Two “Physical Shape and Substance of the Furniture”. It includes two copies, the second one with ...