Herman Miller Furniture Systems: The Personal Workplace – A System of Office Furniture Designed for Comfort: Vol 6. Revolution in the Character of General Office Space – The Nature of the Workplace

01/01/1988

Project Report

18-page document emphasizing the need for a new generation of offices, in which work is a pleasure, and in which work and life are inseparable. Its Table of Contents is as follows: 1. Introduction; 2. Interaction of Human Problems and Environment; 3. The Character of Office Environment Required by Management Efficiency; 4. A Vision of a New Kind of Office; 5. One Hundred Work-Stations: Coordination of Individual Needs; 6. The Role of the Facilities Manager.

Authors:

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

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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 ...

References

Scientific Research

Designing with Patterns and Generic Rules for Making Centers

Areas of focus:

Design and Building Process

Guiding idea:

Structure Preserving Transformations

Pattern languages consist of a multitude of patterns which reflect and define a way of life, people's inner feelings and aspirations, they relate to culture, to climate and to the actual place, and they are rooted in observation. During the pattern ...

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