The venerable New York landmark is set for a $20 million upgrade. The goal is to make it a model of sustainability. To help make that happen, the skyscraper will get advanced lighting controls from Convia/A Herman Miller Company. Those controls will contribute to an expected 40% reduction in energy use.
First off, that’s not me at the easel. Happens to be a student in the library at North Carolina State University. It could have been me, though, because the other day I got the chance, along with the Herman Miller Education Solutions Group, to go to school on what’s next for the academic library.
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Yesterday when my son and resident IT expert was showing me how to perform some supposedly simple computer task involving a cute little cloud icon, he made a rather disparaging comment about my organizational skills. My desktop, he informed me, was “a mess.”
This from someone whose bedroom floor has not been seen since 2005.
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Herman Miller is broadening its presence in social media platforms. With our recently launched official Facebook page, we’re offering you another way to interface with our organization. Watch for real-time updates about products, services, events, and behind-the-scenes stories from our extensive archives on Facebook.
You can also join over 2,000 people who are already following Herman Miller on Twitter. We’re tweeting company news updates and events, as well as responding to questions you have.
Interested in stories about design, products, or the Herman Miller community? Check out our videos on the Herman Miller YouTube channel. Or peruse the stories in this blog, where we welcome your comments in the conversation that interests you—on topics from design to our products to what makes the world a better place for all of us.
Note: This is the fourth in a series about Herman Miller’s Programmable Environments (PE) initiative. To read the first post, see “Getting Buildings and People In Sync.” Second post: “Cut Electrical Use, Get ‘Stimulused,’ and Earn LEED Credits.” Third post: “Energy Manager Saves Energy, Optimizes Real Estate, Cuts Costs.”
According to Always Building, Herman Miller’s book about PE, “To achieve programmable environments, we think about a digital as well as physical dimension of space.” Integrating the digital dimension can make a building smarter, more efficient, and responsive to the people who use it.
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Note: This is the third in a series. To read the first post, see “Getting Buildings and People In Sync.” For the second post, “Cut Electrical Use, Get ‘Stimulused,’ and Earn LEED Credits.”
What if someone invented a simple, affordable device you quickly attach to your car to save you gas? Genius, right?
Well then, check this out. It’s Herman Miller’s new Energy Manager—a simple, affordable device you quickly attach to your Herman Miller systems furniture (new or retrofit) to save you electrical energy, 24/7.
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Note: This is the second in a series. To read the first post, see “Getting Buildings and People In Sync.”
The nutshell idea for Programmable Environments (PE) is to use technology to fill new or existing buildings with intelligence. The building becomes a digital network so that permanent fixtures become adaptable. You can make them do exactly what you need them to do at any moment, change them instantly, and gather real time information about how they are used.
And it’s easy. Here’s the story:
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Note: This is the first in a series of four posts on Programmable Environments.
You hear it all the time: “Technology has changed everything.” Well, duh. But it’s not totally accurate. There’s one part of our daily lives that’s largely untouched by the changes. It’s the buildings where we work and live—static, rigid, set in their ways.
While technology makes us faster, our buildings often hold us back. Unable to keep up with change—much less enable change—our buildings become out of sync with us.
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“Try running a meeting sometime where everyone’s surfing the web and IM-ing their friends, and let me know how you feel about PDAs and laptops in meetings then.”
“So why is trying to get some actual work done at a meeting suddenly a bad thing?”
These comments, posted in response to an article on the technology blog “ReadWriteWeb,” highlight the real issue behind the latest generational gap at work: manners.
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Illustration credit: Caitlin Kuhwald
Small talk gets no respect. Flip through the stacks and stacks (literal or virtual) of books and articles on the topic, and you’ll see that it’s cast as manipulative or mercenary: it’s what you do to get the girl, get the sale, or get the job. It’s called the “grease” or the “glue” of social interaction; neither of those metaphors is particularly appealing, unless you’re a counter cook or a collage artist.
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