Herman Miller – Careful Listening in the Twenty-First Century
Herman Miller Store in Manhattan – Photo credit: Herman Miller
During the Great Depression of 1929, in times of extreme hardship, Herman Miller was on the brink of bankruptcy. To recover financially under such dire circumstance, the novelty introduced by the leadership was to trust an industrial designer to give the firm the guidance it needed to adapt. In 1930 D.J. De Pree, the company founder and CEO at the time, listened to an unannounced visitor, an industrial designer named Gilbert Rohde, who in the course of that fleeting short rendezvous persuaded him that the furniture offered by the company was not reflecting the changes that were happening. By then the incipient modern age was infiltrating all corners of humanity. To Rohde, the traditional and ornate furniture that the company was fabricating, mostly reproduction pieces of period furniture, were out of sync with the real needs of the American people. Rohde was advocating for principles such as function, simplicity, honesty, and truth in design, and recommended that the company start producing modern furniture. Surprisingly, D.J. De Pree, who at the time knew nothing about modern furniture, decided to take the advice given by a stranger, hiring Rohde, and giving him the commanding post in all design related issues.
As affirmed by the renowned design author, Ralph Caplan (1925-2020), the great quality that D.J. De Pree possessed was being an “eloquent listener,” adding that “listening was perhaps [D.J. De Pree’s] major gift as a corporate leader.” Eloquent listening is a distinct way of paying attention to a discourse in which the subject on the receiving end, goes beyond hearing and into a deep understanding of the argument given, collecting it from a place of nonresistance. This deep listening also entails recognizing the expertise, knowledge, and authority of the person who is communicating, gathering the information in correlation with your own perception of the field being addressed to then see value in the rhetoric. By doing so, the listener amplifies their chances of making valuable changes by integrating into their vision those of others.
The new collaboration with Gilbert Rohde, where an industrial designer became the driving force, meant that seven years later, the company was back on its feet after being on the verge of collapse while at the same time gaining considerable national notoriety, precisely for its innovative offer of modern design.
For D. J. De Pree the ensuing success of his collaboration with a designer was a mind-bending experience, with overarching consequences for the shape of the company, from that point forward. It meant that from the accidental encounter with Rohde on, he not only paid attention to what designers had to say but he intently pursued the greatest talents he encountered, turning that experience into the building block and core value applied to everything the company did ever since. The belief that good ideas can come from anywhere resulted in an openness to be influenced by others, provided that they contribute with excellence in creativity. The double platform from which Herman Miller has operated throughout almost a century, on the one hand deep listening, and on the other designers as driving forces, are still today the foundational pillars and the crux of their predominance. In the course of time, the company had to constantly readjust its line of products to be in tune with the evolving exigencies of the discerning consumers it cultivated. In this manner, approximately a decade ago, the company found itself faced with the daunting challenge of having to adapt to a complex society revolutionized by new technologies and the transformed life’s perspective of new generations. One more time, it made recourse of the skill inserted into the company by D.J. De Pree, of knowing how to listen to the language of a new era, expressed through the reshaping of the company, the re-issuing of Herman Miller Classics, and above all through their elegantly conceived novel concept of the Living Office.
For almost a century, the Herman Miller company, based in Michigan since 1905, established itself as one of the preeminent producers of modern furniture in the world and the pioneering firm in this domain. Starting as a non-distinct manufacturer of reproduction pieces of period furniture by the beginning of the twentieth century, and shifting to modern aesthetics in the early 1930s, the company is now a vital global player of the furniture trade and one of the most recognizable furniture brands in the world with presence on all continents. Its continuous success is based on principles of heritage, timelessness, and outstanding quality in production and materials. However, above all, it has done so under the stewardship and creativity of remarkable designers. Over decades, the company developed sustained relationships with an outstanding pool of creators such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alexander Girard, Yves Béhar, Studio 7.5 and many others. The end result was that Herman Miller as a company “not only listened to designers but also actively sought them out.” [1]
As the originator of pivotal moments, through the history of Herman Miller, one can trace the evolution of modern design in the United States. The company introduced modernism in furniture with designs by Gilbert Rhode (1933), advanced the Storage Wall designed by George Nelson (1944), began producing molded plywood furniture designed by Charles and Ray Eames (1946), and produced exceptional textiles and objects by Alexander Girard (1961).
Beginning in 1968, Herman Miller launched the Action Office (AO2) designed by Robert Prost, initiating the cubicle-dominated schemes for the North American market of office furniture, changing the industry, and the way people worked. This product family transformed the company from a product company into a system company, upgrading their enterprise into a contract furniture business. In 1976, Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick, studying ergonomics, developed one of the most distinct office chairs of our era, the Ergon Chair. Through the years this chair was refined and led to sustained further research in the perfection of ergonomic seating. Among their successes, the most ubiquitous has been the Aeron chair. However, in 2018, the company produced the Cosm and the Lino chairs, both self-adjustable and cheap products responding to the downfall of traditional offices, and acknowledging that nowadays, chairs have multiple users.
Today Herman Miller can signify multiple meanings to a variety of consumers. It could be identified as the maker of the Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson's products, the company that initiated American modernism or the one who invented the office cubicle. However, in the company's pervasive presence of the outstanding designs produced in the period between the Post War era and the end of the term of George Nelson as creative director (1947-1972), one encounters the line of products that blends everything and brings a cohesive outlook to the brand. Nowadays, the Herman Miller Classics are an essential part of their business, and the revisiting and re-issuing of pieces of their archive is a persistent practice. However, as Amy Auscherman, the archivist at Herman Miller points out, nostalgia alone is never the central motivation. In tune with the legacy of its founder, the revival of archival pieces has to be dictated by the demand of the contemporary consumer.
Since 2010 the company is defined by a renewed effort to agglomerate its critical functions of design, research, product development, engineering, marketing, sales, and facilities under the purview of one executive. After creative director George Nelson left the company in the early seventies, all divisions within the company grew independently, temporarily losing the firm’s distinct cohesiveness of previous times. However, Ben Watson, the in-house creative director since 2010, was assigned to his post to bring all operations under the same umbrella to turn the company more customer-centered. His central task was to put solutions ahead of products, and to re-define the brand while being inspired by its legacy. Watson and his team elaborated a set of ten tenets that would guide every output of the brand: human-centered, having purpose, integrity, originality, evident quality, sustainability, beauty and utility, spirit, and exceeding the expectations of the public. These values set the backdrop for more significant changes to come.
These changes coalesced fundamentally through first, the new Herman Miller Flagship Showroom and Store, second, as mentioned above, the continuing production of the Herman Miller Classics in tandem with current designs, and third, its concept of the Living Office. Through these three channels, the company addresses both general consumers and trade professionals. Within this latter group Herman Miller caters to residential, small and medium-sized businesses, healthcare, education, workplace, hospitality, and government sectors.
To reestablish a cohesive contact and communication with its customers, the first significant recent measure of Herman Miller was to bring four of their disparate locations in New York City under the same roof [2]. In May 2016, the company moved to a new space located in Manhattan at 251 Park Avenue South. The building, constructed in 1910, is sixteen stories high, nine of which the company's family of brands currently occupies. Interestingly, on the top floor of this building, George Nelson moved his practice in 1973 [3]. This space was Nelson’s last studio and is where he created the interior design for the NYMMS restaurant, designed the traveling exhibition USA 76: The First Two Hundred Years, and completed his influential book How to See. By reappropriating this location, the company connected the present with an important part of the history of one of their most important collaborators.
The first four floors of the current building are composed of 60,000 square feet of retail, showroom, and office space. The full range of products that Herman Miller Group provides can be seen in this one location. On the ground floor is the first permanent Herman Miller retail store in North America, and in the second, third, and fourth floors are the showroom for the industry and their offices. The ground floor displays new and vintage Herman Miller furniture, lighting and accessories with home arrangements. The display design changes every six months and is a curated selection of products from all their brands and inspired by a fictitious persona for every installment [4]. The display schema speaks of a strategy based in empathy with their real consumers to make them imagine the prospective products they could choose to insert into their own lives. This store is their brick and mortar to offer products and services to its customers face-to-face. It is a model inspired by Design Within Reach (a company it acquired in 2014) using the same point of sale and inventory systems and sharing the same products as all DWR locations across the country and beyond.
Of the three areas mentioned above, the most labor-intensive was the elaboration of new workspace solutions. After a decade-long search for alternatives, the Living Office concept came to life in 2013. The dot-com boom at the beginning of the century, so disruptive to Herman Miller's business, was the originator of a profound inquiry into problem-solving for new human needs at work. By 2011, social changes related to the insertion of Generation X into the workforce, and a globally connected and digitally intermixed world, complicating the scenario. These changes were so profound they produced a turning point in how, where, and why people worked, making the previous office furniture offerings almost obsolete. Herman Miller needed to profoundly exercise the ability that its founder, D. J. De Pree distinctively applied at the beginning of the history of the company: deep listening for the dawn of a different age.
To understand the undercurrents of the new era, the creative team in charge of the Living Office project had to listen, paying careful attention to the times, as D.J. De Pree did with Rhode decades earlier. The creative team consulted the Herman Miller archives and took inspiration from the concept of the network introduced by George Nelson when he stated that solutions in the workplace should originate in "the gradual drift from hierarchical structures to networks," [5] defining network as "a net, a floppy, stretchable, structure on which all points connect and constantly interact." [6] After thousands of working hours, a fundamental notion was distilled. It revealed that the future of work is guided by the rule of natural living systems where creativity and ideas are at the center of any business of the twenty-first century: we are in the Era of Ideas.
This new notion implies that all components of work need to be at hand to facilitate "naturally human" experiences at work. The Living Office was not conceived as a cluster of products but instead as a concept in which the central notion is to offer an attentive listening to people's needs while working. The Living Office concept provides a new vision where people are the ones who generate ideas, devise new products, and maintain relationships. To achieve a successful working-environment, organizations should provide an optimized variety of physical environments to advance in their collaborators a spiritual connection to work and to their associates. Each inhabitant [7] is no longer fixed to one place in the office space but is invited to migrate through many alternative furniture configuration areas according to how they best suit their performance at a specific time. The Living Office concept attends all kinds of companies in the new global working environment, including start-ups, home-based businesses, and fast-moving companies of all sizes. To advance its Living Office concept, Herman Miller acts as a knowledgeable consultant in workspaces around the globe, sharing their expertise through their associates.
The company proclaims that each Living Office is unique, "based on the distinctive purpose, character, and activities of its inhabitants." To help a company find its unique needs, Herman Miller identified ten activities that people the world over are engaged in across every workplace. These activities are divided into group [8] and individual activities [9]. Stemming from those activities, the company formulated ten types of settings to provide people with an array of spaces developed to support them. Each setting has its purpose, scale, and level of social interaction. Among the types of settings formulated are those dedicated to concentration or relaxation; generating creativity; presenting content; mixing, mingling, and welcoming; and perching before a group meeting. Additionally, those settings are destined to connect people from disparate locations within an office; work in teams involved in a long-term project; groups to assemble in a compact space for short periods; and meet in an environment that supports information sharing.
A Living Office is composed of a variety of settings, which together form a landscape that is designed to bring an organization's strategy to life. A landscape is a customized arrangement of all the settings a company needs to endow and permit its inhabitants to thrive by providing alternatives and nurturing a sense of community. All settings and landscapes use a variety of fixed, mobile, personal, and remote technology.
The central offerings for the Living Office are specially designed office systems including those by three distinguished design firms: Sam Hecht & Kim Colin (Locale Line), Studio 7.5 (Metaform Line), and Yves Béhar (Public Office Landscape Line). These product lines are supplemented by all other merchandise the company and its brands carry to provide maximum customization, making use of an amalgam of office products and accessories. To fulfill the additional requirements the Living Office concept addresses, the Herman Miller Group began expanding through acquisitions. These expansions started around the year 2000 and continued into the recent past. The Herman Miller Group is today composed of Maharam Fabric Corporation; Geiger Office Furniture; Design Within Reach; Nemschoff, Inc.; naughtone Furniture; Hay Modern Design; Maars Living Walls; and Colebrook Bosson Saunders [10].
With the Living Office, Herman Miller has once more redefined the industry of office furniture, as the Action Office (AO2) designed by Robert Prost did it in 1968 with the cubicle schema. However, this time the innovation is not in providing a system of furniture but a concept and an open-source plan that offers infinite possibilities of customization.
The Living Office concept along with the acquisition strategy to create alliances that enhance the pool of products that address a wide array of customers’ needs; the re-issue of archival pieces that are part of the history of design, nowadays put into the market according to the customer’s demand; and the agglomeration in New York City of all the functions of the company under one roof (store, showroom for the trade, local headquarters offices), are a testament that the original CEO’s tenets are in this new age as central as ever. The complexities of the current state of the world are difficult to discern. Attentive perception to collect the needs of the users in a new surrounding is paramount.
The changes implemented in the company in recent years can be explained by the robust culture the firm's founder, D.J. De Pree the first CEO of Herman Miller, cemented while building the enterprise. The quality of the eloquent listener, where the fluency and persuasiveness are not focused on spoken discourse but on attentive listening, is now in the inner workings of the company itself and in full force. The company is listening to the times and the designers are still their guiding light. In these manifestations one can ascertain the crucial gift of a leader that impregnated and shaped the firm from the beginning. Excellence in design, problem-solving, and quality of fabrication for lasting use are the standards that consistently have been expected of Herman Miller. The legacy of D.J. De Pree still survives the company, and is deeply entrenched in it, explaining its endurance. Herman Miller, having reached the pinnacle of its industry, stays afloat at the top, still inspired by its founder.
Living Office – Herman Miller Graphics
Living Office – Herman Miller Graphics
Living Office – Herman Miller Graphics
Notes
[1] Auscherman, Amy, Sam Grawe and Leon Ransmier, Herman Miller: A Way of Living (New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2019), 8.
[2] Their longtime showroom on Sixth avenue in New York, the Herman Miller team in Soho, Geiger, and Design Within Reach Connecticut with Maharam who had been in the current building for 27 years.
[3] George Nelson was Director of Design at Herman Miller from 1945 until 1972. He occupied this office until 1979.
[4] They also add to the mix houseware from out of the brand designers selected through their marketing and merchandising division.
[5] Auscherman, Amy, Sam Grawe and Leon Ransmier, Herman Miller: A Way of Living (New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2019), 544.
[6] Auscherman, Herman Miller: A Way of Living, 544.
[7] Along with the Living Office concept, the creative team at Herman Miller elaborated a vocabulary. Among it, “inhabitant” for worker, “setting” for office unit configuration, and “landscape” for an office arrangement of “settings” as a whole.
[8] Group activities: chat, converse, co-create, divide and conquer, huddle, warm-up and cool-down, create.
[9] Individual activities: show and tell, process and respond, and contemplate.
[10] Maharam Fabric Corporation, manufacturer of high-end textiles for contract and residential interiors; Geiger Office Furniture, who specializes in the design and manufacturing of office and commercial wood case-goods and architectural furniture for interiors; Design Within Reach, largest retail of modern furniture and accessories in the world; Nemschoff, Inc., a market leader in healthcare furnishings; naughtone Furniture, manufacturer of upholstered seating, stools, occasional and meeting tables in addition to accessories; Hay Modern Design, global leader in authored furniture and accessories for the home and office spaces; Maars Living Walls, worldwide leader in interior wall solutions; and Colebrook Bosson Saunders, manufacturer of high performance ergonomic monitor arms, lighting and technology support products and accessories.
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