Herman Miller Unveils Post-Pandemic Office Collection

April 21, 2021  by Laurie Northington in Business Strategy, Industry   

OE1 is the latest in a line of office products that embraces the unpredictability of the future by landing squarely at the crossroads of agility, functionality, and modularity. OE1 offers a wide range of items that can be used to create highly varied work settings yet are flexible enough to adapt to growth, new needs or desires, or even the unexpected—like a global pandemic. 

"While this project was started prior to the pandemic, our research over the last year has only intensified our belief in the relevance of this line," says Ryan Anderson, vice president of Global Research and Insights at Herman Miller. "With people forced to work outside of offices, traditional means of workplace planning have been challenged by the unpredictability of how people will work now and in the future. These changes will continue, and workspaces need to constantly adapt. Workers are ready for a greater degree of variety, choice, and control—people want their environments to work for them, and OE1 is designed to enable that."

A collection of essential pieces that spans mobile tables, movable walls, height-adjustable workstations, storage trolleys, and more, OE1 directly responds to how and where people want to work, encouraging a reexamination of traditional workplace design while allowing employees to build, test, and recreate their spaces. By enabling people to experiment with space, employees will gain confidence as they will not only discover solutions needed in the now, but also ones that can be adjusted rapidly if needed in the future. OE1 mitigates the risk of an uncertain future for organizations yet empowers employees to create optimal spaces to suit their work. 

"OE1 puts the power of workplace reconfiguration in the employees' hands," says Malisa Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Global Workplace at Herman Miller. "This is a huge benefit for both the organization and the employees. For the organization, it provides a high degree of assurance that their workspaces will remain productive, relevant, and desirable over the life of the building without spending vast sums on facility reconfigurations. For the employee, it signals that the space is in service to them – that it exists to facilitate their desired work processes so that they can have greater control and achieve their goals. Real estate is highly static, but work can change quickly. OE1 was designed to bridge the difference in clock speed between work and the workplace to help organizations succeed in a new era of work."

OE1 was created in partnership with designers Sam Hecht and Kim Colin of Industrial Facility. With a goal of understanding the physical and cultural changes that had started to take shape surrounding the future of work, the team made visits around the world to understand the entire industry ecosystem.

"One thing we noticed is that day one, the furniture is installed—and day two, things need to be changed. When you zoom out to a macro view, you become aware of the magnitude and pace of ongoing change. So OE1 is more like an un-system – it's playing by different rules that address these scalar changes," said Hecht. 

"OE1 offers choice, is flexible, and can adapt so that individuals (not just organizations) get to experience these qualities directly," said Colin. "Our challenge was to invent something completely new while also making it recognizably useful. OE1 is designed so that everything is having a conversation with each other, and the conversation is healthy."  

Used as individual pieces or the entire collection, OE1 seamlessly integrates into existing spaces, or can be used to create entirely new ones, enabling organizations to create new facilities or strategically improve existing ones for post-pandemic working. Companies of any size will find that OE1 offers greater agility and better workplace experiences.