Herman Miller New Office Furniture System: The Personal Workspace – Estimated development costs

31/12/1989

Financial, Budget

Four pages with three variations of tables with estimates for the development costs of specific office furniture, with amounts spent to date, percentage of completion for the year 1988-89 and with an estimated budget for 1989-90. The list refers to items for a private office, a large office, and the possible extra items for later. The fourth page is an early basic list of items with the estimated costs edited.

Authors:

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

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 ...

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