Correspondence

Transmittal of a 20-page copy of “A System of Office Furniture Designed for Comfort: Volume 6. Revolution in the Character of General Office Space”

03/04/1996

Administrative, Transmittal

Sender:

Randall Schmidt, Center for Environmental Structure , Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Recipient:

Audrey Schriefer, New Jersey, U.S.A.

Medium:

Fax

References

Projects

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 ...

Reports

Neighborhood of Seventy Low Cost Houses: Colombia House Process - Part 4: Construction Handbook 01/07/1989

Project, Project Report, Progress Report

Authors:

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

59-page document with construction guidelines, ensuring that each house could be built according to the individual designs developed with each family, and without increasing construction costs. The construction system used was a modified version of the typical construction system of ...