Herman Miller has released their latest advancement in systems design: Canvas Office Landscape.
"Our customers are asking for holistic, integrated workplaces that match the needs of today's workplace and their own unique businesses," said John Lubbinge, Herman Miller's Director of Product Management. "Canvas Office Landscape responds by bringing choice, harmony, and connection to all kinds of organizations and virtually any interior work space."
The Canvas design is the work of numerous contributing designers, most recently Jeffrey Bernett and Nicholas Dodziuk of CDS in New York, building on the earlier work of Douglas Ball and Joey Ruiter.
Commercially launched in January of 2011, the initial product line is composed of Canvas Wall-Based and Canvas Private Office. Canvas Beam-Based is launched in May 2011. And still more Canvas elements are currently in development.
"Herman Miller believes the office must support multiple and emerging technologies and work styles, while still creating a harmonious, connected interior," noted Lubbinge.
As a result, there are very few rights and wrongs in creating and managing workplaces today, said Tracy Brower, Herman Miller's Director of Performance Environments. "There are continuums within varying factors, such as privacy, collaboration, corporate standards and culture, and aesthetic style. Herman Miller's goal is to enable a workspace that is appropriate to the needs of the individual, group, and organization. Canvas Office Landscape helps us reach that goal. It provides landscapes designed to mirror an organization's culture and raise the level of its performance."
Canvas serves as a comprehensive set of elements from which customers can create an entire office landscape - a landscape that moves from workstation-centric to community-centric environments. It gives people choices about how and where to work while creating aesthetic and functional harmony across an entire floor plate. Critically important, it also helps people and their technology stay connected.
In providing a consistent look from private office to open plan Canvas elements function in harmony, allowing architects, interior designers, facilities managers and the individual user to move from one application to another without a learning curve or disruption. Canvas is also scalable in price and performance, enabling A+D specifiers and their clients to leverage one workplace solution for multiple applications, in a wide range of price points.
Canvas includes all of the products and capabilities from Herman Miller's Vivo interiors and Intent furniture, while expanding those capabilities with additions and enhancements, including a new filing and storage offering. Ultimately, Canvas provides wider application, more choices, and improved scalability.
Canvas elements create surround, structure, surface, storage, and support for the complete range of workspaces:
Surround: For giving context. These boundary elements define space and function and perhaps ownership of space.
Structure: For shaping workspaces. These pieces are the means by which a Canvas environment achieves structural integrity.
Surface: For using the horizontal. Canvas' horizontal surfaces support task, technology, meetings, and active storage.
Storage: For mastering materials. Canvas features filing and storage products that meet the storage needs of individuals as well as groups.
Support: For feeling better to work better. Elements like monitor arm supports, lighting, keyboard trays, ergonomic accessories, work tools and organizers allow individuals to adapt a work space to fit their needs. These ergonomic products are essential in providing a health-positive work environment and increasing individual productivity.
New Canvas designs include:
- Multifunctional storage components that offer wall support, surface support, and secondary seating in addition to traditional storage
- Pedestals and 2-high laterals
- Signature screen for privacy and boundary on a lighter scale
- Attaching table and wall-support products
- Expanded flatwork tower vocabulary
- Table/peninsula product for private offices