Susan worked for Herman Miller for almost 12 years. She is enthusiastic about exploring and sharing new ideas and also has an affinity for Post-it notes.
I thought it would be fun to catch-up with the scholarship recipients before the conference to find out what interests them about healthcare design and architecture. And, because creating a better world is important to Herman Miller, I specifically asked them how they think healthcare design and architecture can contribute to a better world.
Check out their thoughts about the subject:
Ryan Cameron Visions in Architecture, Lincoln, NE
It is in a designer’s best interest to provide value to healthcare architecture—value created with better design through increased collaboration, new techniques and time for reflection. Future designers will need all three if they are to create a better world. Read more
People often ask how design happens at Herman Miller. This brief video provides a glimpse of our approach and thoughts from several of our design contributors, including Studio 7.5 designers Burkhard Schmitz and Carola Zwick, and Herman Miller’s Vice President of Research, Design, and Development Don Goeman.
Last week our SAYL chairs made their way overseas to Cologne, Germany, for Orgatec 2010. This international trade fair presents integral solutions for all areas of office and facility design—an ideal place to launch our latest seating solution by designer Yves Béhar.
Those working in our booth were pleased with the reaction to the chairs. Most of all, they heard that SAYL is the right chair at the right time—at the right price.
When Herman Miller’s Materials team asked the award-winning Maharam Design Studio to create some new proprietary textiles, the designers there did what they do best. They created three new textiles that demonstrate “the industrial beauty of what textiles can be,” says Mary Murphy, the Studio’s Vice President of Design.
The Gloss, Glisten, and Gleam textiles use a simple structure that combines luster, sheen, and tonal combinations to accentuate Herman Miller’s neutral and metallic palettes. Plus the reflective qualities of the textiles will help our customers bring more light into the workspace.
According to Marsha Skidmore, Director of Materials at Herman Miller, “Partnering with Maharam’s design team brings the expertise of a premium textile company to our proprietary offer and gives the best value to customers for the Maharam touch on our products.”
Maharam also is part of Herman Miller’s Textile Alliance Program, which offers our customers a multitude of materials created from the best in the world of textiles.
This post is a contribution to Honda’s “Kick Out the Ladder” thought leadership series. Herman Miller was invited to provide a unique perspective on how our corporate philosophy and culture encourages innovation. During the third week of October 2010, four other organizations also provide their own thoughts on the subject. Details and links to what others are saying about “Kick Out the Ladder” can be found at www.facebook.com/honda
This week, Honda launched its “Kick Out the Ladder” series on innovation and graciously invited us to provide Herman Miller’s perspective on the subject. So we’re using this opportunity to debut our new “Design Values” video. It highlights our culture and how we foster innovation in everything from product design to our people practices.
Our mission is to solve problems. And by thinking outside the box to find solutions, we’ve transformed the ways people think about the comfort, style, and function of furniture and their interior environment.
The new SAYL chair family by designer Yves Béhar is our latest example of taking an innovative approach to solve a problem. By rethinking every part of the chair, Béhar and our development team were able to create a better, smarter chair at a remarkable price, setting a new reference point in its class for performance, quality, and appearance.
Focusing also on the idea that people at their best live ‘unframed,’ we worked together to design and build a chair family that gives form to that spirit. In fact, on October 27, we launched liveunframed.com to celebrate the design approach we took with SAYL.
As the Golden Gate Bridge inspired Béhar, we think everyone has the ability to think outside the box, kick out the ladder, and live unframed.
Designer George Nelson believed properly designed modern furniture should be able to function anywhere. It’s a belief that influenced his modular storage solution called the Basic Cabinet Series, which was available from Herman Miller from 1946 until 1958.
We believe the Basic Cabinet Series is just as useful today as it was more than 60 years ago. That’s why we choose to bring it back.
Nelson, who said, “Design is a response to social change,” recognized the postwar period in the 1940s was bustling with change. He understood that Americans had become mobile and that they needed furniture to support the new American life style.
He went on to create the Basic Cabinet Series, which includes modular, easily movable furniture pieces that serve more than one purpose. The pieces save space, while providing lots of efficient storage.
The four chest-cabinet combinations adapt to a variety of configurations and rooms, including those for living, dining, sleeping, or working. And they look great together with the Nelson platform bench. Most of all, they’re beautiful and efficient, which makes for a good combination—then and now.
Dwell magazine’s three-part video series called “The Full Spectrum” recently concluded with a view inside our West Michigan facilities. The program also features an interview with creative consultant Susan Lyons about color and its role in our designs.
Lyons and senior editor Aaron Britt discuss our range of color choices and the influences on them, including an early belief that materials should speak for themselves.
Cerentha Harris, editor of our sister blog Lifework, reports on the upcoming celebration for the famous film created by Charles and Ray Eames.
Herman Miller has a long and rich history with designers Charles and Ray Eames. Back in 1977, the Eameses created a short film called “Powers of Ten.” As the Eames Office reminds us, “It still has the capacity to expand the way we think and view our world.”
Coming up is a particularly important anniversary of the film: October 10, 2010. This year, part of the celebration will include the online streaming of “Powers of Ten.” There also will be an exhibition at the Eames Office in Santa Monica, California, that explores the idea of scale that is so central to the film.
Herman Miller’s role in ArtPrize continued on Saturday, October 2, by sponsoring a guest lecture by world renowned artist, architect, and dedicated environmentalist Maya Lin.
She captivated an audience of more than 200 people at the Grand Rapids Art Museum with a presentation called “Projects and Processes,” which focused on the past 10 years of her work and her latest endeavor called What is Missing?.
What is Missing? is a memorial commissioned by The California Academy of Sciences. A large bronze “listening cone” lined with reclaimed wood, it’s designed to function as the first component of a multi-site, multimedia artwork dedicated to raising awareness about endangered species and habitats.
Lin also created the What is Missing? Foundation to help people understand how they can make a difference for the planet and how to balance their needs to conserve our natural resources.
Utilizing its sponsored space at ArtPrize called The Hub, the company brought its guests together to raise awareness for supplier diversity, help increase engagement among corporations in West Michigan, and provide networking opportunities for diverse suppliers with corporate decision makers.
According to Kim Coffman, Herman Miller’s Supplier Diversity manager, “The event collectively gave us an opportunity to celebrate supplier diversity and look ahead to the future.”
“Overall, supplier diversity is an important part of growing business and building a stronger community,” she adds.
Since 1990, Herman Miller has maintained a focus on supplier diversity and recently added it to its list of strategic business initiatives.
