Eames Executive Work chairs (also known as Time-Life chairs) encircle this table at Warner Brothers in the 1970s. Per Herman Miller: “If you were an art director at Warner Brothers Records in the ’70s … this is where you would have meetings with Fleetwood Mac.”
Robert Propst’s Action Office. Groovy.
Another version of the Action Office. Less groovy.
Still another version featuring a George Nelson-designed standing-height desk. The man was ahead of his time.
George Nelson himself.
The Action Office 2 secretariat in 1969.
An Action Office tableau from “The Design Process at Herman Miller” at the Walker Art Center, 1975.
The Action Office with textile panels by Alexander Girard, an Eames secretarial chair, and a matching IBM typewriter, 1972.
An IBM ad that appeared in the
New Yorker in 1957 featured an upholstered Eames wire chair and a George Nelson swag leg desk. Check out the full ad
here.
A tangerine coconut chair by George Nelson.
Hello, curtains!
Bill Stumpf, designer of the Aeron chair, also designed the Ergon chair, the first research-based ergonomic office chair. It was released in 1976.
And now for some house porn. A shot of Case Study House 28, an experimental house built in 1966 and designed by architects Buff and Hensman as part of the Case Study House program.
In the Case Study program, the now-defunct
Arts & Architecture magazine commissioned prominent architects to design cheap model homes. This shot of Case Study House 28 shows upholstered Eames wire frame chairs.
One more shot of Case Study House 28, complete with Eames La Fonda armchairs and pendant lights from Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala.
If you haven’t discovered the lush Instagram account of American furniture giant Herman Miller, consider yourself lucky. I wasted an unseasonably glorious Sunday afternoon combing through images of secretaries with bouffant hairdos in prim little offices, and it made me long for eras I never lived through (and ones that, frankly, aren’t worth longing for).
But such is the power of Herman Miller. The company, which has manufactured home and office furniture since the early 20th century, continually captures the aspirational ideals of the U.S. workplace. Its perky, streamlined designs suggest a cheerfully efficient vision of capitalism, evident in the stripped-down workstations from 1969 and the peach-colored Eames secretarial chair from 1972 (complete with a matching IBM typewriter). Herman Miller has managed to make American workaholism look effortless and borderline charming, even if the truth of our productivity-driven culture is less idealistic. See for yourself in these historic photos, culled from the company’s Instagram.
[Images: Herman Miller via Instagram]
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suzanne LaBarre is the editor of Co.Design. Previously, she was the online content director of Popular Science and has written for the New York Times, the New York Observer, Newsday, I.DMore
