Herman Miller Darwin Table

Herman Miller, esteemed manufacturer of modern workplace furniture, paired Design Concepts with an architectural firm to design a furniture system to meet the unique needs of office technology workers.

Consistent with the Herman Miller brand, the collaborative team designed an elegant, graceful and innovative new furniture system which included freestanding adjustable-height tables, storage bins, lighting, accessory-tool-rail and privacy screens.

The improved, overall aesthetic reduced the visual weight of the system and replaced it with a clean, contemporary aesthetic.The table features motorized height adjustment, manual height adjustment, and a fixed-height version with a high degree of parts commonization. The freestanding system can easily be reconfigured and allows individual workers to optimize the height of their work surface without expensive or time-consuming alterations. Engineers used extensive Finite Element Analysis to implement a robust adjustable table mechanism.

The design achieved the desired goals for structural rigidity, and passed all ANSI/BIFMA tests. In addition, engineering reduced the initial table deflection by a factor of 9 through engineering optimization. The unit cost to manufacture was reduced by 20%.