On Friday HNI Corporation approved the closure of its Orleans, Indiana office furniture manufacturing facility which was also known as the Paoli office furniture plant. HNI acquired Paoli in 2004.
HNI to Close Paoli Plant in Orleans, Indiana
How to Use a Standing Desk Without Annoying Your Co-Workers
As with any new piece of automated equipment, navigating the proper etiquette of standing desks can involve a bit of a learning curve.
You will literally stand out. Embrace it.
“If you have a standing desk, that’s still viewed as being somewhat dorky,” said Joel Johnson, 37, a publishing consultant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “It’s not a big deal, but some people are never going to be accepting of it. Some people will roll their eyes. It’s fair game for light teasing.”
Think about where you take meetings and what it means.
If you’re standing and co-workers are sitting, it’s like you’re at a lectern, so rise (or sink) to their level. “There is a sitting area in my office with a table and a few chairs, but for a lot of meetings, people will just come and stand at my desk,” said David Carter, 47, the chief creative officer at Mithun agency in Minneapolis. “Psychologically, it says we’re not going to hang out and have a longer meeting than necessary. It’s a little bit of a power move.”
THE NEW CUSTOMIZATION: LOOKING FORWARD
In our Participate series and in so much of our point of view, we look into the culture at large to understand how to design thoughtful products and continually improve outcomes for our customers. We believe a fundamental way to move that needle is to invite the active participation of the design community, which results in a more customized — and ultimately more meaningful — product for you.
We’ve developed capabilities with both digital tools and personal concierge services that allow you to work with us earlier in the design process, so that you can personalize your products. Then we deliver them with expertise, convenience and efficiency to save you time, and we shoulder complicated logistics so that you don’t have to. In the process, we get to know you and anticipate what works as you create the next great spaces that inspire great work.
Tom Dixon launches first range of Office Furniture
British designer Tom Dixon has launched his first collection of office furniture, which includes a minimalist lamp and a workstation based on archetypical Victorian school desks.
Dixon designed the range to accommodate the ever-blurring boundaries between the workplace and the home.
Pieces are intended to provide function and flexibility while being attractive enough to be on show in living spaces.
Pair Chair
With over 8,000 color combinations, Pair Chair, designed by Benjamin Hubert for Republic of Fritz Hansen, is a versatile object for interior designers and architects.
Launched at The Republic of Fritz Hansen showroom as part of London Design Festival, the Pair Chair embraces the Mid-Century design language that Fritz Hansen pioneered, utilizing a pressed plywood shell with a strong sense of fluid geometry. The traditional material of the seat shell is paired with an injection moulded polycarbonate backrest, creating an interesting tension between old and new and modernizing the Fritz Hansen material palette. The backrest is moulded with 10% transparency, which elevates the plastic material by giving it a glass-like quality.
Clarus Glassboards: How 2 Jobless Guys Built a $105 Million Business (in Only 5 years)
In 2009, Robby Whites and Jeremy Rincon were laid off from their jobs as junior analysts when their employer was shut down for a fraud investigation. For some, this would have been a major setback, but Whites and Rincon seized the opportunity to create something new.
Reflecting on a recent business trip to Colombia, the duo recalled their visit to an office that used a simple sheet of glass mounted on poles as a writable surface. Having spent years in the corporate world, Whites and Rincon recognized a need for an updated, more advanced and attractive version of the 1960's messy, inefficient white boards. With an untapped potential in this market, they believed it would be groundbreaking to give people an attractive, functional alternative to write creatively on stylish walls, knowing it could easily be washed and wiped off. Following in the footsteps of the famed inventors Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the two twentysomethings headed straight into the garage at the home of Whites' parents. Clarus Glassboards, LLC was born.
This $5,900 chair may be the tech world's new key to productivity
Che Voigt believes his company has solved problems that have plagued the working world since the advent of typing.
It’s a solution to hunched backs, stiff necks and tight shoulders. It’s a workstation that, with a push of a button, transitions from a standing desk to a seated table to a fully reclined platform like a dentist’s chair. Its seat expands and retracts, supporting the whole body from head to heels. Its desk moves up, down and rotates. There’s a screen and mouse and keyboard that follows the user’s eyes and hands.
It’s the way of the future, he says; the most comfortable you can possible be working at a computer. And it starts at $5,900.
Cozy in Your Cubicle? An Office Design Alternative May Improve Efficiency
In 1993, Jay Chiat had an epiphany while skiing in Telluride, Colo. The adman who created Apple’s memorable “1984” TV commercial thought it was time to “think different” about his own office: Chiat believed the workplace had become as static as an elementary school, with people only leaving their desks for lunch and for trips to the bathroom. He wanted his office to be more like a university campus.
HOW TO CHOOSE SIT-TO-STAND OFFICE DESKS
Choosing the right sit-to-stand desks for your clients’ unique space and requirements is essential for the success of their transition to sit-to-stand working. So today, I’m looking at 5 vital questions you should ask when choosing sit-to-stand office desks for your clients.
UPHOLSTERED SEATING WITH PINCHED CUSHIONS
Skrivo Design was experimenting with clever ways of mixing polyurethane and steel tubes when it came time to design their latest project. The Pinch seating system, designed for Italian furniture brand La Cividina, features tubular legs that extend up to the tops of the furniture making the upholstered cushions look as if they’re being pinched together.
Your Butt Totally Deserves This $26,000 Chair That Makes You Feel Weightless
Stop and think about how many hours you spend sitting in an office chair hunched over a computer. Don’t you think your butt deserves to be cradled in something more luxurious than whatever was on sale at Staples? The Elysium chair isn’t cheap, but it’s brilliantly engineered to make you never want to get up again.
Designed and engineered by David Hugh who earned a PhD in bioengineering and spent 10 years developing an equation that defines how posture is affected by gravitational forces. That equation is what led to the development of the technology behind the Elysium chair, and is one of the secrets behind why it’s promised to be extremely comfortable.
NEW PRODUCTS: eko Introduces Picnic
Picnic is a collection of collaborative tables and soft seating benches inspired by the classic picnic table. Designed to work together or independently, the collection brings a casual charm to interior environments and makes for a setting that’s playful and productive at the same time.
Nissan’s autonomous chair is your line waiting buddy
Nissan’s ProPILOT tech might mostly be used to help provide its cars with autonomous driving features, but a new project puts it into a chair. Yes, a chair.
The chair propels itself, detecting the chair ahead of it and keeping a fixed distance between itself and its neighbor, as it moves along a predefined path. It’s less flexible than the chairs in Wall-E (kudos to Megan for noticing the similarity), but perfect for alleviating the pains of an age-old human tradition – standing in line.
ProPILOT Chair is designed to make it a lot easier to wait for something, whether it’s the latest iPhone or just a seat at the city’s hottest brunch joint. It’s also going to actually be used in real-world applications, which is more than I expected at first glance from what seems so obviously like a marketing ploy.
Furniture made from recycled newspaper has brick-like strength, marble finish
Sometimes designers make furniture out of paper and leave nothing to the imagination—just look at these lumpy lamps and stools. But such is not the case with a new furniture series from Netherlands-based designer Woojai Lee, who’s managed to transform paper into a polished, brick-like material.
Aptly named "Paperbricks," the project has so far yielded two coffee tables and a bench. These pieces were created from recycled newspaper that was, as Designboom details, first turned into pulps and then mixed with glue and shaped into "bricks." Upon closer inspection, the pieces actually reveal a marble-like finish. Recycling paper isn't difficult, but Lee’s exploration shows how the ubiquitous material can be reused in a way that avoids downgrading the quality of the fibers.
The Chair in Charles Eames' Office
Visitors to the Vitra Schaudepot, the newest building on the Vitra Campus, can now see Charles Eames’ personal office, just as it was when he passed away in 1978.
The Little-Known Eames Intermediate Chair
This year the Vitra Design Museum opened a new building, the Schaudepot, on their campus. Inside is a recreation of Charles Eames' personal office, "just as it was when he passed away in 1978." (What is Ray, chopped liver? Sadly there's no mention of her office.)
Inside we can see that Charles worked on a George Nelson desk. The chair, however, was of he and Ray's design: The Eames Intermediate Chair from 1968.
Humanscale Becomes First-Ever Company to Achieve Living Product Challenge Certification
Humanscale has just become the first manufacturer in any industry to achieve Living Product Challenge certification. The certification, which presents the most rigorous standard for sustainable manufacturing, was officially announced tonight at the International Living Future Institute’s Living Product Expo in Pittsburgh, where Humanscale’s Sustainability Officer Jane Abernethy, a featured speaker at the event, was on hand to accept the award. As a result, two Humanscale products — the Float table, a height-adjustable desk, and the Diffrient Smart task chair — are now to be classified as “Living Products.”
1994: the year the newborn Internet set office design on a different path
Because we are now so immersed in technology, we can sometimes forget just how young the Internet is. It was only in 1995 that the final barriers to its full commercial development were removed. In 1994, the number of people using it worldwide was estimated at around 20 million, there were under 15,000 company websites and the UK had one ‘cybercafe’. Even so, there was something in the air. A sense that everything was about to change – and change pretty spectacularly. The management writer Charles Handy was outlining a new world of work in which people developed portfolio careers, organisations were formed from ‘shamrocks’ of freelancers, core staff and part time employees, a world in which half the people would work twice as hard. There was excited talk about new forms of office design and ways of working such as telecommuting and hot desking. The world that emerged has broadly followed the trajectory of these forecasts, even if the details have proved very different.
THE PERSONALIZED TOUCH: WHY THE CO-CREATION TREND SPARKS A MORE EMOTIONAL PURCHASE
One of the earliest lessons we learn about spending money is that our purchases should be meaningful. Think back to when you were a child and there was a toy you really wanted. Rather than simply buying it for you, did your parents insist that you earn the money for it yourself? If so, their reason was probably at least partially because they knew that toy would mean more if you saved up for it yourself. Once you saved your money, you’d have the excitement of going to the store to finally make your purchase, and when you had the toy at home, you’d enjoy it so much more because of all the work you put into earning it. That kind of emotional connection is powerful.
VIDEO: HUMANSCALE’S HOME OFFICE MAKEOVER: WATCH THE TRANSFORMATION
The winner of our Humanscale UK Home Office Makeover Contest with Grand Designs magazine is now the proud owner of a sleek, stylish and more comfortable place to work.