Herman Miller Creates “Living Office” Exhibit at NeoCon

Herman Miller highlights their new product offerings in a “living office” setting at NeoCon, North America’s largest design exposition and conference for commercial design.

Last year, the company introduced the “Living Office” during the annual Chicago event to show its interpretation of a modern workspace. This year, Herman Miller transformed their entire showroom into a working office.

Greg Parsons, Herman Miller’s VP for Landscape Environments said, “We’ve basically said the showroom of the past is as outdated as concept as the office of the past. Instead, we’ve created a ‘Living Office’ for our Chicago team in a workplace optimized for its purpose, character and activities.”

Michael Dunlap, a Chicago-based furniture industry insider, said that this is the perfect stage for the full lineup of the company’s products as it really showcases what the company does. Visitors are able to see how the furniture pieces functions and the variety of potential individual customization that the company offers.

Parsons explained, “Living Office is a holistic offering of ideas, products, furnishings and services.” He added, “It offers a framework to address management methods, tools and places based on what we know to be true of people, not outdated notions of industrial process left over from a century ago. It is a response to sweeping changes we see in a world of work.”

According to Parsons, Living Office features 10 distinct languages of office settings that users can choose from. “Each setting offers a kind of recipe for space design.”

NeoCon is currently the venue for office furniture designers to show their concepts of how a modern workspace should be. Another example would be Holland-based Haworth which won the Best of NeoCon Award for two consecutive years (2013 and 2014.) Last year, Haworth unveiled its Bluescape interactive touchscreen wall. Local companies also highlighted their workspace designs such as Trendway and Symbiote.

Herman Miller took the gold for Best Large Showroom Design for its second consecutive year.