Herman Miller’s SAYL chair won another green nod, this time in Treehugger’s annual Best of Green awards. It scooped the Design and Architecture category with 46% of the votes. Check out the other winners here. It’s heartening for us at Herman Miller to see our commitment to environment honored in this way. A big thank you to Treehugger and their readers!
Lloyd Alter continues his great Herman Miller coverage over on Treehugger. Check out his post and slideshow on the making of our Eames Lounge Chair. Lloyd went behind the scenes at the factory where the iconic chair is made.
Treehugger has nominated our SAYL chair in this year’s Best of Green design awards. We are so thrilled to be included and hope all you Lifework readers will head over to vote for Yves Behar’s awesome design. And just in case you were wondering how green that work chair really is check this out. At the heart of Yves’ design is the idea of eco-dematerialization. That’s a fancy way of saying 93 percent of the chair is recyclable. Structural components are hollowed out, reducing weight and volume. The ArcSpan, arm structure, and tilt mechanism are all fused into a single strong part that also reduces the chair’s weight. I love that Treehugger describes the chair, which retails for $399, as the green IKEA-killer!
Above: Core 77 did a great interview with Herman Miller’s Jack Schreur and Yves Behar on the evolution of SAYL.
I wonder what Herman Miller’s founder D. J. De Pree would think about yesterday’s Treehugger post on standing desks. Having spent yesterday glued to my work chair writing all day I can see a lot of advantages to a standing desk! Is anyone out there working at a standing desk? Be interested to hear what it’s like.
Where we’ve been this week…
1. Tweetdeck’s Blog You may have noticed my rather clumsy attempt at getting the word out yesterday about our Ideal Live/Work Space series and Alain de Botton’s contribution. Twitter was down (something about double messages). Facebook was slow (so I triple posted in my haste to get something, anything out there and now there are three messages sitting on top of each other saying pretty much the same thing and I look like a right fool!) All in all a very unsatisfying experience. Thank goodness my husband came home for lunch and loaded Tweetdeck for me. I’d been introduced to it before but didn’t get why I’d use an app like that when I could just use Twitter. He kindly walked me through it. Now I get it (I think!) Where to start: Their blog turns out to be helpful. It’s a nice window into the workings of this clever app. Start at the top and wander through.
2. Idiot Box And the nice thing about Tweetdeck is that it has led me into a whole new world of blog surfing. Producer Dan Taberski retweeted the Alain de Botton story so I checked out his blog, Idiot Box. First it’s a Tumblr blog and you get design cred points for that. Second he is the creator of Destroy Build Destroy which my son loves so more points for that. And finally he has a great eye for interesting tidbits. Be prepared: this definitely falls into the Stop Work category. Where to start: The front page is a mosaic of stories and the best place to begin.
3. CurbedNY The Curbed family, with it’s gossipy real estate slant, always has something intriguing to share. I used to live in New York, way back in the 90′s before the husband and kids came along. I love dipping back into that world via CurbedNY. Where to start: The latest plans for public art on Park Avenue. I still remember Fernando Botero‘s sculptures gracing that street.
4. Treehugger With Halloween fast approaching it seems an opportune time to think about doing it a little greener this year. Treehugger always has great green round-ups and their Halloween green guide doesn’t disappoint. Where to start: Once you’ve checked out the Halloween guide head over to this post on literally greening your home office.
5. Buzz Beast A nicely designed online magazine that covers trends and is slanted to Gen Y but packed with enough good stuff to keep Gen X and Boomers happy. Where to start: Check out the first in their The Way I Work series.