Pitt County Memorial Hospital Chapel, a LS3P project. Photo: Mark Herboth

Just like any good design, the best examples of healthcare architecture are human-centered and problem solving. Marc Marchant, Vice President and Principal with Charleston, South Carolina-based LS3P Associates, recently spoke with Discover about the complicated yet rewarding world of healthcare design. Marchant, a thirteen-year industry veteran, is a former recipient of the Herman Miller Health Care and American Institute of Architects’ Healthcare Interns Scholarship.

What are a few of the challenges unique to designing spaces for healthcare?
In healthcare, there are complicated buildings that require a very solution-based outcome—not just for the building, but for the patients and staff. How do you create a building that comforts patients, creates a meaningful work environment for staff and is extremely functional? How do you take something as mundane as an MRI room and create a space that is conducive to keeping patients calm during an otherwise unnerving procedure?

How do you work with a client to help them stay true to their vision?
The design and construction process can take years, so it starts with the design team and owner collaborating to establish the big vision and always looking back at that big idea to make sure they are achieving it. Everyone needs to have buy-in from the beginning to achieve the vision.

What’s the role of sustainability in healthcare design?
Fundamentally, the tenants of sustainability help us create buildings that are healthier for people and for the environment. The good news is that in healthcare design, many products and installation methods support sustainability as a baseline. The industry demands it because it’s the right thing to do. Some of the challenges include water use and mechanical design, all of which can be achievable in hospitals. Our role as designers is to communicate the benefit analysis for our clients.

Tell us about a project you were proud to be a part of.
One of the things I appreciate about healthcare design is that the half-million dollar projects are just as important as a $50 million project in terms of applying good healthcare practices. About three years ago, LS3P completed the design for Hampton Regional Medical Center, a replacement hospital in a rural county in South Carolina. The biggest challenge was to support the CEO’s vision, which was to maintain the health center for the county, to grow its support to the community, and to magnetize an affiliation with a larger medical system.

We’re real proud of the results. The new hospital is a beacon in the community; it’s welcoming and accommodating, with expanded, state-of-the-art services to attract doctors and nurses. It has become a place of gathering for the community, and a large healthcare system in Charleston is now affiliated with it. The story was less about architecture and more about how good design and really listening to your clients can create a positive outcome for the community.

George Nelson, designer and Design Director for Herman Miller from 1946 to 1972, has written that “every design in some sense is a social communication.” So what is design saying? Nelson spent a good deal of his life answering that question, along the way skewering those “social communications” that weren’t worth listening to.

Nelson’s writings on design predated a phenomenon Steven Heller notes: art schools teaching writing. That’s no surprise, says Alice Twemlow, who with Heller co-founded the MFA Design Criticism program at the School of Visual Arts. Design is all around us, so it’s important that there be insightful writing on the subject.

Few have been as insightful as Ralph Caplan, another friend of ours and recent recipient of the AIGA Medal for contribution to writing about design. When he wrote that it is “a process for making things right,” he could have been describing Herman Miller’s approach. Solving a problem that people really care about in a way that improves on other solutions is the way another pretty good writer, Clark Malcolm, put it.

So if solving problems by design is so important, why bother writing about it? The world has plenty of intransigent problems that could benefit from design thinking. For the answer, we give Caplan the last word: “Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.”

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.

The point is that to dictate any mode of working is not a good idea—even the most creative and team-oriented people in the world need to work alone sometimes. The answer is to give workers a choice, which is why we make everything from desks that snap together to cubicles that turn the idea of the cubicle upside down.

In conclusion, it seems that the underlying issue you are dealing with is not so much the cubicle and your annoying co-workers as much as it is your boss’s management style. Change her (or him or whatever), and your spirits will be lifted no matter what type of office you are working in.

Sincerely,
Mr. Randall w. Braaksma
Assistant to the Assistant

Art by Dave Albers

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.

“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.

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 1990s. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This guy wasn’t pondering this question back in 1930. (It wasn’t long after that we were.) Today, more people like him are not only thinking about being green, they’re making their living doing green work.

McGraw-Hill Construction says 35 percent of architects, engineers, and contractors report having green jobs today. The study defined “green jobs” as those that involve over 50 percent of one’s work being done on green projects or designing and installing green systems.

That 35 percent represents 661,000 jobs, or about one-third of the industry workforce. And there’s better news. The share of green workers is expected to increase to 45 percent of all design and construction jobs by 2014.

We’re delighted to see these trends. As merchants of virtue, we are committed to being green, even when it isn’t convenient, because in the end we know it’s as good for business as it is for the earth.

The paint has dried and the doors have opened on a new Herman Miller Healthcare Customer Experience Center that engages and inspires.

To engage visitors, we designed plenty of hands-on experiences. We encourage customers to  interact with and experiment with products. Visitors can try the Oasis overbed table while lying in bed. They can rearrange the modular tiles of the Compass System and see first-hand the Herman Miller Performance System.

Inspiration comes in the form of settings—from waiting rooms, to patient rooms, as well as laboratories. Visitors see thoughtful, realistic solutions to their problems, as well as many that really make them think.

Engaging and inspiring, the aim of our Customer Experience Center is to help people realize the power of space.

Our 1953 promise to “be a good steward of the environment” put Herman Miller on a path toward helping Yellowstone Park. As the first national park, Yellowstone is often referred to as “America’s best idea.” A national treasure, it faces the complex challenge of balancing environmental preservation with public enjoyment.

Addressing this, Yellowstone Park and the Yellowstone Park Foundation recently gathered fellow leaders in environmental advocacy—including Toyota, the University of Michigan, and National Park Service—to beginning thinking how to balance its objectives.

We were honored to join the discussion and help facilitate a session that began mapping a sustainable future in which Yellowstone remains as beautiful as it is today.

Mattiazzi believes in the power of building close partnerships with leading designers. First with the He Said/She Said chair by Nitzan Cohen in 2009, and then successfully followed by the Branca chair with Sam Hecht of Industrial Facility, and the new Osso chair by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

When working with Hecht, “We took our time in the development, to refine every detail and dimension,” explains Cristina Salvati of Mattiazzi. “Branca’s design was something special that could not be rushed through a formal process.”

This appreciation for the details of authored design is what brought Herman Miller and Mattiazzi together, making us the exclusive distributor of Mattiazzi products in the U.S. and Canada.

What do a high-speed train and a nanotechnology textile finish have in common? They were inspired by Mother Nature’s 3.8 billion years of research and development. Increasingly, designers and engineers are looking to the systems, process, and models evolved by nature to fuel innovative problem-solving.

The aerodynamic shape of the kingfisher’s beak, for example, lets it catch fish with barely a splash. The same shape allows a Japanese bullet train to move at 200 mph with just a whisper, and 15 percent less energy.

For us, nature inspired Greenshield, a sustainable nanotechnology textile finish that naturally repels oil and water. By mimicking the “micro-roughness” of the lotus leaf—undetectable to the human touch—liquids roll off the surface, never having an opportunity to penetrate. The result is a Herman Miller fabric that is naturally antimicrobial, stain repellent, and easy to clean.

Nitzan Cohen loves furniture, especially chairs. “They relate most to the body; there is a constant relationship to people, and there really are no boundaries when designing it,” he says. After years of designing with Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design, Cohen established his own multi-disciplinary studio, with clients including BMW-Group, Diesel, Mattiazzi, and Bree.

When Mattiazzi first approached him about designing a new chair, he began with lots of questions: “What will the character of this chair be, will it be ‘loud’ or more timid? You have to find its DNA.”

Perhaps the result surprised even him: two versions of the same chair: He Said/She Said. “I thought about the classic café scenario: girl meets boy, boy meets girl, sitting on two chairs at a small round table; he says something, she says something…and I named it with that in mind.”

We aim to improve the human experience wherever people work, heal, learn, and live. Problem-solving design and “being a good steward” are just two ways we do this. We also set goals for our business and our people, including: environmental advocacy, inclusiveness and diversity, health and well-being, and community service.

Every year we put together our Better World Report so that you can see how well we’re doing at reaching our goals. Here are a couple of highlights:

11,500 volunteer hours spent in the communities where we work around the globe.

437,225 miles saved by employees carpooling and biking to work.

100% green energy usage in our facilities worldwide.

To learn more, see the web version or download the full report.

In 1953, Herman Miller founder D.J. De Pree promised, “We will be good stewards of the environment.” That promise drives the design and innovation of our products today.

Setu’s Kinematic Spine, for example, has a not-so-secret secret—polypropylene, the same recyclable material used to make everything from toothbrushes to garbage cans. Making the plastic structure flexible and strong involved creative engineering. The result is a lightweight mechanism that lets Setu mimic your every move.

Visit us at Greenbuild 2011 in Toronto, October 4-6, 2011.

Unique to ArtPrize, voting is left entirely up to the public. Week 1 allows unlimited voting to determine the top ten artists. Week 2 gives everyone a single vote to narrow the ten to a winner awarded the $250,000 top prize.

If you’re in the area enjoying ArtPrize, stop by the HUB, a Herman Miller lounge for artists, volunteers, and the public to relax, put up their feet, and continue discussing the art they’ve seen.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out ArtFile, a collaborative project between Herman Miller and students in the UICA ArtWorks youth program.

“We will be a good steward of the environment,” was the promise made by Herman Miller founder, D.J. De Pree, in 1953. Living up to this sometimes means investing time and money into solving a problem that doesn’t occur until a product is at the end of its life-cycle.

Celle, for example, was put together with taking it apart in mind. With five minutes—and a screwdriver—Celle can be disassembled into recyclable components. Following our own Design for the Environment protocols made that work. And it made an impression: Celle has earned MBDC Cradle-to-Cradle Gold certification.

Visit us at the Greenbuild 2011 in Toronto, October 4-6.

It’s one thing to talk about solving problems; it’s another to make it a tenet of good design. That’s what we strive to do, and Fast Company recently placed us on its list of Thirty Companies That Get It for creating, “furniture that inspires—and solves problems.”

Charles Eames once said, “The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the problem.” George Nelson was a problem solver, as was Robert Propst and as are Ayse Birsel and Studio 7.5. In fact, solving problems with good design is a prerequisite for Herman Miller.

Consider Aeron, designed by Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick. Radical when it launched, its transparent style has inspired numerous copies. But foam and fabric wasn’t replaced with Pellicle because it looked good. Research showed that the suspension material allowed air to reach the body, preventing heat and moisture from building up—keeping the sitter comfortable much longer.

Solving a problem in an original way provided Aeron its distinctive look as well.

Dared to create art on art, local Austin artists and designers turned the smooth, white surface of an Eames molded plastic chair into the medium for their expression. Some turned to Mondrian for inspiration and others to a hammer and nails. The Good Design Challenge was held in conjunction with a recent Herman Miller exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art.

This isn’t the first time an Eames chair has become a canvas.

One of today’s most influential industrial designers, Jasper Morrison is known for his minimalist approach. Throughout his prolific career, he has strived to create simple but functional beauty in everyday objects, from door handles to trays to wristwatches to chairs. He was a pioneer in using gas-injection technology for furniture; the Air Chair he designed for Magis was one of the very first times it had ever been used for that purpose.

“It represented a big shift in the quality of the one-piece plastic chair,” he says. “Previously, plastic chairs were only possible with single wall thicknesses and reinforcing ribs. The gas-injection technology allowed for continuously smooth surfaces.”

Morrison has been featured in many magazines, and he has published several books on the subject of design. His work has been shown in many international museums, and his retail shop in London carries hundreds of well-designed household items from around the world.

Herman Miller designs a lot of furniture on campus. Seeing what students carry around helps us do it better. So, recently we asked them to send us pictures of the contents of their backpacks.

Backpacks have built-in limitations, which makes you stop and think about what you need to carry around. And, for each of us, the definition of “need” is as individual as our fingerprints. Oh, there were certainly the expected items: pens, books, cell phones, laptops. But there were also some surprises: deodorant, changes of clothes, and toothpaste. Hmmm.

Anyway, filling a backpack certainly involves making decisions. Which reminded us of ideas that designer Ayse Birsel advocates—you can design the life you love and doing so involves good decision-making. For Birsel, good design means good decisions. For us, seeing the decisions students make when it comes to filling their backpacks is fodder for making good design decisions.

You know the old saying that two heads are better than one.. But it may be that only two heads are better for collaborating. Recently, we conducted research at our Design Yard facility, which was recently equipped with our Canvas furniture. Fully 68 percent of collaborative events were between two people versus larger groups.

Findings like that raise another question: How are people really using places at the office? Getting a clear, accurate picture of usage is essential to intelligently remixing available square footage. A better mix of settings can include microenvironments that enable these ad hoc gatherings.

Places that promote a few people “swarming” around a problem-solving challenge can accelerate the creation of new knowledge. And this sort of knowledge remains a key concern for organizations. A recent survey of the London Business School’s Future of Work Consortium found that “deep collaborative working” was rated a top factor in ongoing effectiveness. In a word, let’s get together—but not too many of us—and work it out.

A “new” trend is emerging among workers in Silicon Valley: the standing desk. We know sitting all day is not ideal for the human body. The low physical workload and rearward rotated pelvis puts you at risk for back pain. Not to mention, excessive sitting slows your metabolism and can even negatively affect cholesterol levels.
But the truth is, standing all day isn’t any better. In fact, the high workload placed on the body while standing is equally as harmful as the inactivity in sitting.
What the body wants is movement. Alternating from sitting to standing several times throughout the day reduces the chance of back pain and improves circulation. Both are essential to productivity.
The standing desk is far from a new concept. In the 1960s, designer George Nelson developed the first stand-up, roll-top desk for the Action Office line. We continue to encourage movement in all our furniture. Everywhere and Envelop tables enable multiple height-adjustments. Paired with a work chair, you can sit, stand, and move, all of which will help you feel better and work better.

The work of Konstantin Grcic is known for its logical thought process, honesty of materials, and respect for production methods. His partnership with Magis led to one of the most interesting and inventive chairs ever created: Chair_One. “This was a wonderful project to work on,” says Grcic, admitting that his relative youth (and naïveté) led him down unexplored pathways with eyes wide open.

“This was possibly the first time ever that such a large die-cast was used for making a chair,” he explains. “It involved a lot of heavy tooling. I decided to break up surfaces into thin sections like branches and let the material flow through the mold to create the shape, which is kind of like a basket or a grid, and very three-dimensional.”

Chair_One now resides in the permanent collections of many prestigious museums including MoMA in New York and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. It joins other Grcic pieces in museum permanent collection, including his Mayday Lamp, produced for Flos in 1999.

Charles and Ray Eames felt, “The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host, all of whose energy goes into trying to anticipate the needs of his guests.” When those needs were not met, the Eameses, as hosts, created a solution.

In 1950, Charles and Ray invited friends, including actor Charlie Chaplin and sculptor Isamu Noguchi, to their Pacific Palisades home for a bit of Japanese culture in California—a traditional tea ceremony. For each guest, the Eames created a small wire table. Just 10 inches tall, the table provided an individualized setting for each guest as they kneeled together for an ancient Japanese custom.

That tiny table is the Eames wire based table, or LTR, a design that is still anticipating needs of guests today.

To learn more about the Eames’ philosophy designing for needs, visit Eames Designs: The Guest Host Relationship. The exhibit is presented by Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles and opens October 1, 2011.