Correspondence

Herman Miller New Office Furniture System: A letter outlining the opinion of why the project had to end; inability to give and take in a way necessary for design projects. A wish that a trusting relationship could be established, but those wishes have not prevailed. Four items are outlined that might establish a working relationship and allow a restart: work plan, contractual agreement, fixed budget, and trust

05/12/1989

Status of Project, Project Revival

Sender:

Robert Harvey, Herman Miller Inc., Zeeland, MI, U.S.A.

Recipient:

Gary Black, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Medium:

Fax

Content of

Project

The Personal Workplace - New System of Office Furniture 1988 to 1990

Zeeland, MI, U.S.A.

Office Furniture, Designed , Two personal offices with furniture prototypes built by C.E.S.

Client:

Herman Miller, Inc. - Rob Harvey, Vice President

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black

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:

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

Herman Miller, the second largest manufacturer of office furniture in the United States, commissioned C.E.S. to develop the "personal workplace", a new system of furniture, which aimed at changing the nature of the American workplace completely. The emphasis was on ...