Eye Delight

Check out Eye Delight-2011 for more interesting images.

Konstantin Grcic: A Love for Building Things

“Why did you become a designer?” “Because I love building things,” says Konstantin Grcic. Interior Design recently picked the brain of the Chair_One creator with its 10 Questions…. Here are four that we found interesting:

Interior Design: Why did you become a designer?
Because I love building things. When I was 19 years old, I did an apprenticeship for a cabinetmaker and I became intrigued. I discovered that I could create or rethink the things I built. I enrolled at the RCA (Royal Academy of Arts) in London.

What does design mean to you?
That’s an impossible question. You could write a book or say something really stupid.

What do you most like to design?
The physical scale of furniture attracts me. It’s what I’m good at. And it’s what I really like.

Where do you get inspiration?
KG: It comes from everywhere—from daily life.

Visit Interior Design for the rest of Grcic’s answers.

Student Designers Make Their Mark

Student designers at Drexel University recently rose to the challenge of making their mark at the school’s Library Learning Terrace. Part of an extra class project, more than 50 graphic design students created experimental compositions using words associated with Drexel’s learning outcomes. Sophomore Seth Fowler choose to “show growth through exploration and learning,” two words appearing in the trunk of his tree-like design; “the branches are the fruit of learning, represented by the word ‘knowledge.”

Five student designs were selected and will be printed on Herman Miller Resolve dividing screens located in the Learning Terrace, a hub for students to gather, study and collaborate with one another.

Teaching Design to Healthcare Professionals

Physicians and nurses work through a space planning exercise. Photo: Joint Commission Resources

The design process can be overwhelming if you’re unfamiliar with its various phases, tools, and lingo. A new workshop aims to give healthcare professionals the skills to positively influence patient safety and quality during the design and construction of future healthcare environments.

Learning to read blueprints, articulate a future vision, and design for flexibility, these and other skills are covered in the Safe Health Design Learning Academy. This three-day session is organized by Joint Commission Resources (JCR)—a not-for-profit healthcare accreditation organization—and sponsored by Herman Miller.

Giving physicians, nurses, and healthcare leadership an active voice in the design of healthcare will result in safer spaces, better patient care, and satisfied caregivers—all noble goals.

The next JCR Safe Health Design Learning Academy will be held in April 23-25, 2012; sign up now.

What Does Affordable Design Look Like?

It looks beautiful when it’s from the hands of designer Yves Béhar. Who, with Herman Miller, set out to dispel the misconception that affordable meant offhand design and questionable quality.

Looking for affordability in innovation, Béhar and Herman Miller engineers spent months developing a unique suspension material for the backrest of SAYL. The resulting breakthrough molded ergonomic support directly into the back of the chair, which was then stretched into place. It also replaced foam and fabric, typical to other low-cost task chairs, with a single recyclable material. Less material and fewer manufacturing steps, all saved money. A point not lost on Spencer Bailey of Bloomberg Businessweek, who recently described SAYL as “An executive-quality perch that doesn’t require an executive’s bonus to buy.”

Plywood: Material, Process, Form

An early prototype of the Eames lounge developed in 1946.

In 1945, Charles and Ray Eames introduced the world to molded plywood as a material for furniture. Using a process perfected in the living room of their Westwood apartment, the Eames created numerous prototypes. With each, they learned the characteristics and limitations of molded plywood, eventually landing on the forms of their iconic molded plywood chairs.

This February, see the Eameses’ hard work on display along with plywood designs by Aalto, Jacobsen, Yanagi, and others at Plywood: Material, Process, Form at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Hurry, the exhibition closes February 27, 2012.

Dropping 300-Pounds on Design

Designer Yves Bèhar isn’t kidding when he says, “Every molecule in the SAYL chair had to work harder.” To achieve Bèhar’s vision of an eco-dematerialized design, every piece of SAYL was examined, sculpted, and hollowed out to use the least amount of material without compromising strength. Was it successful? Well, SAYL survived having a 300-pound sack dropped on it—multiple times.

The Herman Test Lab, where SAYL was put through its paces, is infamous among our designers. Some have even dubbed it “the place where designs go to die.” Weights, pulleys, and pistons test every design to the brink of failure—and beyond—to ensure they meet the requirements of our standard 12-year warranty.

Engineers weren’t sure SAYL would make it. It did, thanks to some hard work making every piece work harder.

Designing Balance into Collaboration

More than ever, working together defines how we get things done. And more than ever, getting things done often takes just two people. Recent research we’ve conducted at companies around the world found that nearly half the time collaborative events involved two to three people.

But no matter the number of people collaborating, companies are committed to making it happen. One approach they’re taking is to give their employees flexible workspaces. In a recent survey, 50 percent of corporate real estate executives said this flexibility enables collaboration.

All this focus on collaboration shouldn’t obscure the fact that people also need privacy and freedom from interruption. Research also suggests that some people, and especially introverts, are more creative when they can work on their own. Maybe the best way to get the creativity we’re all after is to design places that give people more choices for when, where, and with whom they work.

Frank Gehry’s House Proves Its Merit

The American Institute of Architects each year recognizes one American building that is at least a quarter of a century old. “The idea,” says Robert Campbell of the Boston Globe, “is to recognize architecture that has proved its merit over time.”

This year, the AIA chose the residence in Santa Monica that Frank Gehry designed for his family. As much statement as structure, the house features materials familiar in an urban landscape: raw plywood, chain-link fencing, asphalt, corrugated metal—not the stuff of a quiet residential neighborhood.

But, Gehry has seldom been concerned with the expected. We have our own stories to tell about working with him on a factory-office facility we built in Rocklin, California. It has proved its longevity, too. Now owned by the William Jessup University, it’s become an award-winning student apartment building that preserves, as the award citation reads, “the original conversion of the Herman Miller furniture factory, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry.”

How Does Charles Eames Define Design?

Charles Eames, relaxing in the shell of a molded plastic armchair, seems lost in thought.

In keeping with much of his work—from potato chip chairs to Eiffel Tower bases—Eames’s answer may surprise you.

In 1969, Eames was interviewed by Madame L’Amic of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs as part of a design exhibition showing at the Louvre that year. The session proved fruitful, the source of several well-known Eames quotes, and eventually became an audio track on Design Q&A, an Eames Office film on the design process.

The book, Eames Design; The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, included a transcript of that interview. The following are a few memorable excerpts.

Q: What is your definition of design?
A:  A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Q: What are the boundaries of design?
A: What are the boundaries of problems?

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