Eye Delight: 2011

Looking Back at 2011:
Herman Miller and Magis—“More Than”

The meaning of Magis—”more than”—captures the Italian company’s approach to design and manufacturing. “We add to Herman Miller because we are complementare, complementary,” explains Alberto Perazza, Co-Managing Director of Magis. “Even a world apart, we do the business of design in similar ways. Both companies have many and continuing collaborations with the greatest world designers.”

Much like Herman Miller, Magis employs innovative processes that maximize performance, while minimizing volume of material, energy use, and environmental impact.

The names of Grcic, Morrison, and Fukasawa join the ranks of Eames, Nelson, and Stumpf, as Herman Miller is now the exclusive distributor of Magis products in the U.S. and Canada.

Learn more about Magis designers.

Check out the HermanMiller Store for more details.

Looking Back at 2011:
Funny How Design Affects the Spirit

Dear Ms. DiOrio,
Thank you for your letter of praise for what the office cubicle means to you. I presume you thought your “open letter to people or entities who are unlikely to respond” would be lost in cyberspace. (Another highfalutin word I’m sure you feel is unnecessary.) However, I have been asked to respond on Mr. Miller’s behalf.

While we do appreciate your sentiments, I must, on behalf of everyone at our company, correct some of your more egregious errors (the factual ones, not the errors in thinking). Mr. Miller did begin the company that allowed you and Dilbert to flourish (we receive no proceeds from Mr. Adams), however the inventor of the cubicle was Mr. Robert Propst. And, as with most inventors (think Dr. Frankenstein, for example), he became dismayed at what his creation became (“egg-carton geometry” was one phrase he used to describe the way people applied it). Read more

Stockings Galore at the Design Yard

The lords are leaping and the maids are milking, but who’s been making all these stockings?

For the fifth year, holiday stockings hung along the corridors of the Herman Miller Design Yard and multiplied into the hundreds. And they’re not cookie-cutter stockings either—each are one-of-a-kind and handmade out of our textile leftovers. In fact, every once in a while, passersby try buying one for themselves to hang over their fireplace.

However, these stockings were not for sale, but rather made for a greater cause. In the season of giving, Herman Miller employees volunteered their lunch hours for sewing and decorating a total of 477 stockings. All those carefully crafted stockings were distributed to these handpicked charities: Holland Rescue Mission, Urban Family Ministries, Love INC, and St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. These organizations work directly with the families who took the stockings filled with goodies home for the holidays.

Labor Produces Beauty

“If we think about architecture as simply beautiful objects,” says Michael Murphy, founding partner of Mass Design Group, “then we fail to talk about the process which creates those objects. It’s labor—the construction of craft—that produces beauty.”

Consider Butaro Hospital in Rwanda, an example of MASS Design’s belief in first-rate healthcare facilities for the third world and investing in the local economy as a means of breaking the cycle of poverty. For Butaro’s wall construction, local Rwandans became the masons: hand-chipping volcanic rock and beautifully shaping each piece so they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Built 100 percent by the community, Butaro’s walls are as much symbolic as they are functional. They testify to a community that labored together, using newly learned skills, to build a hospital for themselves.

Patients benefit from their labors, too, in the design of the hospital. Placing beds in the center, making each bed a window seat creates a positive patient experience. An innovative airflow design minimizes the spread of airborne diseases.

Butaro Hospital is functional, innovative, and beautiful. But, to the community, its best design was the process by which it was created.

Herman Miller is excited about working together with MASS. Learn more here.

Herman Miller and Magis:
Designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec

For designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, “creativity does not come from a rational point of view but an emotional one. Design is about finding a certain balance or character when you are looking for solutions to problems that are difficult to solve.”

The Bouroullec’s intention when designing the Steelwood furniture group for Magis, was to find an affordable alternative to plastic, “We needed to reduce the complexity of wood assembling, so we kept our design simple,” says Ronan. Something that said, “’I am a well-constructed, beautiful object, one that will last a long time, and will grow old quite nicely with you.’ Not just something people use, but are happy to have around them.”

Their approach to the Osso chair for Mattiazzi, “…was to let the sensuality of the wood express itself,” says Erwan. “The chair invites people to touch or even caress it, as it is extremely sculpted and polished.”

Brothers, the Paris-based Bouroullecs have been partners in design since the 1990’s. Together they have collaborated with companies around the world. Their designs are also part of many international museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Design Museum in London, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.

Magis Spun: Fun by Design

Design is so busy solving problems that we sometimes forget that it’s OK to have fun with it. That certainly isn’t the case with Spun, a design whose sole purpose seems to be bringing smiles to the faces of everyone that sits in it.

Designed by Heatherwick Studio, Spun it looks more like a children’s top than a chair when upright. But lay it on it’s side and Spun becomes a comfortable chair that lets the sitter rock side to side—and best of all—spin around, and around, and around.

Check out the video we made the day Spun arrived at Herman Miller. Enjoy the smiles as people experience it for the first time.

Want to try it yourself? Follow this link to find a Herman Miller retailer near you.

Working Together for a Better World:
Herman Miller Joins with Mass Design Group

The Butaro Hospital in Rwanda, designed and built by MASS Design Group in partnership with Partners in Health.

People around the world have truly become neighbors in a global hometown, and we at Herman Miller support our neighbors wherever they are–locally, globally, and everywhere in between.

It is in this spirit that Herman Miller Healthcare is honored to partner with MASS Design Group. Started by students from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, MASS has, in a very short time, become a leading organization for pushing the boundaries of design and architecture for the purpose of improving the healthcare and lives of people in the world’s poorest communities.

In places like Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia, MASS applies a human-centered approach to design to create innovative, inexpensive, and effective healthcare facilities. The impact of their work has been recognized at home in the U.S, and MASS is now working with healthcare leaders such as Cincinnati Children’s Hospital on their Cerebral Palsy Clinic.

This partnership is long-term, and we are excited about working with MASS to build a better world around you.

Follow MASS Design on Facebook and Twitter.

Forty-five Years of California Design: Where to Begin?

Where do you begin celebrating 45 years of California art and design? With 60 museums and 70 galleries, to be exact. Pacific Standard Time, believed to be the largest museum collaboration ever, will be showcasing works by California-based artists and designers from now until January.

From the works of Charles and Ray Eames in the 1940’s to the hardcore punk scene of the 1980’s, California’s artistic influence is on display. Check it out and see why LA can go toe-to-toe with NYC when it come comes to art.

Check out Lifeworks for peek at a few Eames and Herman Miller related exhibits.

Herman Miller and Magis:
Designer Naoto Fukasawa

Designer Naoto Fukasawa believes that designers, “don’t think to design the ‘ordinary.’” Normal is too boring. His approach to design is to not overthink an idea, because when we do, “our actions become awkward.”

The Déjà-vu family designed for Magis proves Fukasawa’s contention that “normal” should be anything but boring. Composed of a chair, stool, and table, Déjà-vu feels familiar. A trait that helped earn the Déjá-vu chair an Interior Innovation Award in 2007, and a 2008 nomination for the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik in Germany.

Based in Japan, Fukasawa and his studio design for companies around the global, including Artemide, Boffi, MUJI, and his own electronics brand ±0. He also teaches or lectures at several prestigious Japanese universities.