The Goldstein Museum of Design

This week, we kept it on the right side of the river and explored a galley on the Saint Paul campus of University of Minnesota, the Goldstein Museum of Design.

The exhibition currently showing at the Goldstein is "Good Design: Stories From Herman Miller". Herman Miller is a renowned furniture company, specializing in ergonomic office furniture with style! Herman Miller was home to some of the greatest furniture designers of the 20th century.

One of Herman Miller's most prominent designers was the design team of Charles and Ray Eames. (I learned that Ray was a woman, and that they were married.) Their modern designs featured clean, smooth lines, minimal mass, and molded construction. One of their pieces that I really liked was a chair and footstool set of bent or molded wood. They also used their bent wood techniques to create splints for injured soldiers during WWII.

George Nelson was Herman Miller's Director of Design for a long time, in addition to being a top designer. One of the examples of his design was the Marshmallow Sofa, a sofa with a simple metal frame and a multitude of small circular cushions for the back and seat areas. Another example that I really liked was a modern design Roll top Desk. It was flat and slightly slanted down, with a wooden roll top that rolled 3 inches over the work area, with the idea being that work could be preserved just as it had been left, but the desk had a clean and tidy feeling with the rollers up. It also had a section for hanging files located at the far back of the desk, with the idea that there they could be out of the sight line, but easily accessible. I thought the desk, and the philosophy behind it, embodied a wonderful combination of functionality and incorporated design.

Herman Miller has an overall message of fantastic stylish modern design incorporated with human need. They place themselves as the source of authentic modern design, and make it clear that such design is relevant, stylish, cutting-edge, and hip as it was 50 years ago. Their ideas about "Good Design" circulate around meshing human needs and human tenancies (mental and physiological) into every step of the design process, from conception to packaging. A number of displays showed examples of this. One showcased how they repackaged individually sold chairs for a retail environment, reaching out to people outside of the office world who were not familiar with the brand. Another showed their efforts to change the public perception of their modern design furniture from something that is to be displayed rather than used, to pieces that incorporate fully into the everyday lives of hip young adults today. Yet another instance of their "Good Design" centered around "Place Expectations," how the ambiance of a room or building or surroundings can greatly influence one's emotions, behaviors, and actions, and how Herman Miller takes consideration of problems of place into their deliberations with architects, designers, and customers.

Some parts of the exhibition were great. One area showed an office setup from the 50s or 60s, and the considerations that went into its creation, and then showed a modern office setup, with the same information. It was interesting to compare the two, and also really fun to see retro office equipment. Another area focused on the design steps for current office chairs - complete with the chairs to sit in and test drive! I thought it was wonderful to have the ideas and science and information, and then to see and feel how it worked personally. Another section was about the creation of office spaces, especially the cubicle. Herman Miller basically invented the cubicle, which I did not know. It showed the psychological and productive considerations that went into designing such spaces for office workers. "A person in a totally open office plan tends to feel unprotected and insecure. Total enclosure, though, makes it hard to communicate and participate. One wall provides some psychological comfort; a second wall begins to offer some privacy. Three walls with a widened opening were recommended as the best solution, providing good definitions of territory, acceptable privacy, and constant access to and involvement in collective activity."

As for the exhibit itself, I thought it contained a lot of pieces, examples, information, and interaction, and that it did a good job at covering many decades of design. However, there was an overpowering sense of everything being too cramped together, that they tried to fit too much into the space. Some of the information and displays were hard to read because there wasn't enough space to comfortably stand in front of them. One section of displays ran facing the back wall of the space, with only about two feet of space to walk past and read it! At times the layout was just uncomfortable, as so much is crammed in to every part of a small space that it is hard to take it all in in a meaningful way. Somewhat ironic, considering Herman Miller's dedication to space ambiance.