Best of Year Awards Put Herman Miller in the Spotlight

Herman Miller's Best of Year Award Winners Last week’s Best of Year Awards—Interior Design magazine’s design competition recognizing superior interior design projects and products in all categories—highlighted three products from Herman Miller: the Envelop desk, the Setu chair, and the Embody chair. Envelop won the Best of Year Award in the Furniture: Contract/Desking & Systems category, while Setu received the award for the Seating: Contract/Conference category. Embody was noted for its Merit Award in the Seating: Contract/Task category. reblogged by Maria Davis

Introducing Setu

ready. SET. go. Smart Furniture introduces the SETU chair by Herman Miller. Design your own in 3minutes. Goal: A work chair that was comfortable, environmentally responsible, stunning to look at, and a perfect fit for the modern office. The designers at Studio 7.5 responded with a chair that met and exceeded every immodest goal: the Setu Chair. New, innovative, precisely engineered, and beautifully designed, the Setu Chair mirrors the rush of technology and the bustle of the modern workplace. It's also designed to deal with the downsides of the modern workplace: long stretches of sitting, working at computers, and fatigue. Every inch of the Setu Chair has been molded and re-molded, finessed, until it has become the ideal chair for the today's office, and the today's worker. The Kinematic Spine is a hyper-responsive, intuitive design element that enables your unlimited and ultra-comfortable movement in the Setu Chair. Designed to look like the human spine, and arranged against the back and seat of the chair as an exoskeleton, it is a transparent, hip and useful piece of furniture design. When you sit in the Setu Chair, it is the Kinematic Spine that allows for your freedom of movement. The Herman Miller Setu Chair is all about transparent design, literally. The elastomeric fabric that serves as the back and seat of the chair is a mesh, allowing for semi-transparency and the free passage of air through the chair.That keeps it cool, in more ways than one. Literally cool in that it prevents the build up of heat that can happen with solid or leather chairs and cause discomfort and sweating, and cool in the way it adds to the technological and aesthetic quality of the chair. The engineers, designers and artists who worked to create the Setu Chair did it with one goal in mind: to make it perfect for you. They succeeded by building a chair that couldn't have been built before, a wonder of modern design.

Steelcase and Herman Miller Unveiled New Products at NeoCon

CHICAGO, Ill. -- At the NeoCon 2009 trade show, Herman Miller and Steelcase unveiled some of their newest, and improved, products that are made with recycled material, are recyclable, use less energy, take up less shipping space or help cut down on energy use. Herman Miller's new Setu chairs are designed as multipurpose chairs - for use in places like conference rooms - but they are made for people to spend longer periods of time in. The chair is made with one continuous seat and back, and the only adjustment it has is for seat height, leaving it with fewer parts and weighing less than 20 pounds. The chairs contain 48 percent recycled content, are 92 percent recyclable, and are seeking Cradle to Cradle and Greenguard certification. The company has also announced its Energy Manager, a system that can control two of the four circuits of power that feed into a group of workstations, providing quick and easy power management to individuals. The Energy Manager can either be programmed to only provide power at certain times or use occupancy-based controls to provide power to certain devices only when someone is at the workstation. In the new Intent furniture line of desks, storage and shelving, reclaimed wood accounts for 90 percent of the wood content in the work surface substrates. Herman Miller also unveiled a couple of new light products. Twist is an LED undershelf light that uses 40-50 percent less energy than traditional undershelf lights and provides 60,000 hours of light. Flute is an LED desktop light that uses 4.5 watts of energy, can last up to 100,000 hours, is 82 percent recyclable and is made from 26 percent recycled content. Steelcase has announced a broad range of news as well. Its Nesso access floor is made with recycled materials like newspaper and fly ash, and has eliminated the use of PVC. Steelcase's Cogent Group collection of Cradle to Cradle Gold certified textiles has been expanded to include more colors and styles. The company has also expanded the choices available for its Think chair, which now has 14 standard color options, utilizing Cogent Group textiles. Steelcase has additionally redesigned the packaging for shipping its Think and Amia chairs, reducing the amount of space needed to move them around by the equivalent of 150 Steelcase trucks per year. more here.

Three Herman Miller Products Pick Up Awards at Neocon

Chicago — Herman Miller’s Setu and Embody chairs, along with its Twist task light, have picked up awards at NeoCon 2009 World’s Trade Fair. Interior design and real estate management professionals jury the “Best of NeoCon Awards.” They recognized Herman Miller's Setu chair with a gold award in the Conference Seating category and a silver award in the Lounge Seating category. Also, the Embody chair got a silver award in the Ergonomic Seating category, while the Twist light was given gold. The awards are sponsored and organized by the International Interior Design Association, the International Facility Management Association, Contractmagazine, the McMorrow Report and Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. “These awards reflect our company’s continuing investment in innovation and also the talent and dedication of employees and designers who made it possible for us to achieve this recognition," noted Herman Miller President and CEO Brian Walker. More from The Holland Sentinel