Photograph

Herman Miller New Office Furniture System: Wall Lights and Reflectors – Photographs of mock-up

01/01/1988

Mock-up

Image of detail of one of the reflectors, placed under the wall light strips.

Photographer:

Artemis Anninou/C.E.S., Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Source:

Slide

Characteristics:

Color

Content of

Construction Innovation

Herman Miller New Office Furniture System: Wall lights & reflectors 1988

Work of Art for Project, Office Furniture Prototype

Created by:

Christopher Alexander, Artemis Anninou, Gary Black

System of wall lights placed at the wall-celing interface, to form a lighting cornice. The wall lights are supplied with computerized colored reflecting surfaces, that can be installed either below or above the wall light. Full scale functioning light fixture ...

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 ...

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 ...