Getting Buildings and People In Sync
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.
So it’s no surprise that so many buildings stand empty and obsolete, destined for demolition. But even if a building is repurposed, it’s expensive to continually update the brick and mortar and the pipe and wire.
Herman Miller believes that by working together with architects, designers, and information technology leaders, they can design this problem away. So they started an initiative to help make it happen, called Programmable Environments (PE).
PE uses design and technology innovation to give people more control over their surroundings. With PE, we can program the features of a built environment to fit what we do and what we prefer. A space becomes as flexible as the Herman Miller furniture and seating in it. And we can save energy every day.
The promise of technology makes the potential of PE virtually unlimited. Herman Miller believes PE can fundamentally change how we design, build, and manage our places so they are more responsive, responsible, and sustainable.
To help you get to know PE, I’ll have more posts about it here on Discover over the next few weeks. For an overview, watch the video above. And you can get the complete story in a book by Herman Miller called Always Building: The Programmable Environment. It explains what PE is, what it can do for you, and the design potential it provides.