Enchord Desk by Herman Miller

Herman Miller History

Founded in 1923 and recognized today throughout the world as an innovator in office and residential furniture design, Herman Miller has been ranked since 1986 among the top ten in Fortune Magazine’s annual list of the 500 most admired companies. Their pioneering research into producing environmentally responsible furniture has earned them GreenGuard Indoor Air Quality certification for most of their products. Aesthetically, many of Herman Miller’s iconic designs, particularly from the 1940s and 1950s, are valuable collector’s items and on permanent display in museums such as the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1933, new furniture designs created by Herman Miller designer Gilbert Rohde exhibiting the smooth lines and unembellished shapes of the emerging mid-century modern furniture style were exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair. In 1944, Rohde’s successor George Nelson designed such enduring icons as the Platform bench, and was famously responsible for teaming the company with such influential design artists as Alexander Girard, Isamu Noguchi and Charles and Ray Eames. Charles Eames, widely regarded as a genius in contemporary furniture design, produced one of Herman Miller’s most successful products in 1956, the elegant Eames Lounge chair. In 1994, Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf introduced a new office chair called Aeron (derived from the word aeration, which describes how the mesh suspension promotes comfort), which became an immediate worldwide success and earned a spot in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as well. Today, Herman Miller continues to attract world-famous designers like Jeff Weber, Jerome Caruso, the Studio 7.5 Design Team in Berlin, Yves Behar, Mark Goetz and many more.

If the purpose of design is to solve problems, and the relationship between design and business is synergistic, then Herman Miller today continues to be in the vanguard of design as a fundamental part of strategic planning.

Sam Hecht & Kim Colin

“We were inspired to design a table that was functional and flexible to match people's lives.”
— Sam Hecht and Kim Colin

Sam Hecht and partner Kim Colin formed London-based Industrial Facility in 2002 to “…explore the junction between industrial design and the world around us.” Born in London in 1969, Hecht studied industrial design at the Royal College of Art, worked briefly for an architect in London and traveled in the US and Japan before returning to London. Kim Colin was born in Los Angeles where she studied art history and architecture, and moved to London in 1997 as an editor for Phaidon Press and to teach architecture at the Royal College of Art.

Herman Miller, continuing their tradition of working with world-class problem solvers to help people work more efficiently and effectively, engaged Industrial Facility to contribute to its new line of furnishings for home work environments. In 2008, the Hecht-Colin design team created the Enchord desk, featuring a dual-level work surface. Embracing a minimal aesthetic joined to a practical design, the desk can accommodate a wide range of users.

Convinced of “the importance of design as a means of simplifying our lives in an inspirational way,” Sam Hecht and Kim Colin have applied their elegant, yet rigorous take on design to projects for companies as diverse as Epson, Magis, Lexon and Whirlpool as well as Muji, for which they are the European creative directors.