The show­room pro­gramme was extend­ed to include meet­ing rooms, lounge spaces and a grand con­fer­ence area defined by over­lap­ping drapes of heavy wool felt, translu­cent cot­ton and flame-resis­tant sheers curved to avoid two large light sculp­tures made from recy­cled Eames Lounge Chairs’ seats and backs. An elab­o­rate fir ply­wood tube-like sheathe orga­nizes the space and pro­vides an ante­room to the for­mal show­room com­po­nent dis­trib­uted through­out the large­ly unal­tered full loft on the north end of the 10,000 square foot floor plate.

Her­man Miller Canada’s flag­ship show­room is Canada’s first LEED cer­ti­fied inte­ri­or. Our green approach to this project was auto­mat­ic giv­en the com­pa­ny’s strong ped­a­gogy that con­tin­ues to shape their oper­a­tional man­date pos­si­bly more than ever. We chal­lenged our­selves to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that echoes Her­man Miller’s endur­ing design phi­los­o­phy while offer­ing a new, recon­sid­ered show­room expe­ri­ence.

The deci­sion to move their head­quar­ters out of an office tow­er in Toron­to’s Cen­tral Busi­ness Dis­trict to a slow­er, reha­bil­i­tat­ed indus­tri­al area of the city was the first step in pro­mot­ing the idea that a vis­it to Her­man Miller’s Nation­al Design Cen­tre be an encom­pass­ing event — a des­ti­na­tion. The expe­ri­ence required, there­fore, that the vis­i­tors’ sens­es be re-set, so to speak, upon arrival. This “palette cleanser” takes the form of a ply­wood sheathe that greets and slow­ly redi­rects vis­i­tors right from the ele­va­tor entrance.

Mate­ri­al­i­ty and man­u­fac­tur­ing are of pri­ma­ry impor­tance to Her­man Miller, and its impres­sive list of fur­ni­ture design­ers. They often owe prod­uct suc­cess to inno­va­tion (as well as envi­ron­men­tal account­abil­i­ty) in these areas. As a ges­ture to fore­ground this phi­los­o­phy, as well as to cod­i­fy more inti­mate spaces emerg­ing from behind the thin ply­wood sheathe, a dot screen graph­ic image of Her­man Miller fac­to­ry work print­ed onto vinyl wall cov­er­ing, coats small meet­ing rooms and sup­port spaces that lead to the main show­room dis­play area. The show­room prop­er is housed in the gen­er­al­ly unma­nip­u­lat­ed, naked brick-and-beam north­ern half of the 4th floor for max­i­mum lib­er­ty of dis­play. Fin­ished prod­ucts are meant to be read against this degen­er­at­ed graph­ic field whose images come in and out of focus.

Once cap­tured by the reori­ent­ing ply­wood “fil­ter”, vis­i­tors are snagged by a series of inti­mate meet­ing and stag­ing rooms while being lured by the main show­room to the north, and the Marigold con­fer­ence areas to the south from behind bil­low­ing sin­u­ous drapes.

Adorn­ing their ceil­ings are two cus­tom sculp­tur­al light­ing ele­ments, act­ing as foils with­in the loft archi­tec­ture. Con­struct­ed of seats and backs from Eames lounge chairs, the light­ing sculp­tures are meant to evoke sit­ting under the beech trees’ canopy at Marigold (a Her­man Miller vil­la in Zee­land Michi­gan where Charles and Ray Eames, Noguchi and oth­ers spent much time think­ing.) The dis­as­sem­bly and then reassem­bly of these icon­ic chair parts cre­ates an entire­ly new light­ing object auto­mat­i­cal­ly imbued with the age-old val­ues of Her­man Miller.