Commercial Interiors Projects

In design practice there is a substantial distinction between residential design and commercial design. Commercial design typically involves complicated physical, financial, and legal relationships.

The base building (architectural shell) is today often quite separate from the interior infill. Partition systems, office work stations that are demountable, open work space all make interior environments independent from the enclosing building envelope

• Up until the 1950's adapting office spaces to meet the needs of a tenant involved little more than putting a fresh coat of paint on the walls of existing offices.

• Today, office buildings are designed to be able to accommodate changing needs of different tenants.

• A base building condition today includes sophisticated raised flooring systems that allow for hvac, electrical, plumbing, and data cabling to be located out of sight, beneath the finished floor surface.

• Movable and demountable partition systems often take the place of gypsum board walls.

• The separation of a 'base building' from the 'infill', or 'tenant upfit' is related to a series of economic and technological events.

• The industrial revolution, of the early to mid 1800's, prompted the emergence of the service industry. By the late 1840's less than a 1/4 of the world's population was dependent on agriculture as a means to make a living.

• The service sector, of law, accounting, banking, and other business functions, grew in proportion to the changes brought on by industrial manufacturing.

• Office space began to fill existing buildings. • One of the first dramatic high rise buildings

was the Home Insurance Building.

William LeBaron Jenney Home Insurance Building 1883-1885 Chicago, Illinois

The development of high rise construction, and especially the steel frame, really made commercial interior space possible. William LeBaron Jenney's Home Insurance Building of 1883 was an early example of the potential of large scale open commercial space

The Rookery, Chicago, IL  (1886), John Wellborn Root

• By the mid 1930's the Johnson Wax building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, , included specially designed furniture.

• The desk and chair set, manufactured by Steelcase, was an integral part of the interior design and supported the workers' tasks.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Johnson Wax building, Racine, Wisconsin, 1947

The Herman Miller Company

In 1942 Herman Miller introduced its first furniture product for the modern office, a component system called the Executive Office Group, designed by Gilbert Rohde.

• Gilbert Rohde   It was 1930, and Gilbert Rohde had a problem: He was full of fresh new ideas about furniture design but he couldn't convince any of the traditional manufacturers to take them on. Then he met D. J. DePree. DePree also had a problem: His company, Herman Miller, needed a major shot in the arm if it was going to survive.

Rohde told DePree that his new ideas made sense for the changing times and for the growing number of people who were living in apartments and smaller houses. "This calls for a different kind of furniture," he said.

Could Rohde design such furniture, DePree asked? Yes. Would he design such furniture for Herman Miller? Yes.

A deal was struck, and thus began a relationship that would lead Herman Miller into an exciting and challenging new era. "You're not making furniture anymore," Rohde told DePree. "You're providing a way of life."

Disdaining ornamentation that often covered up shoddy workmanship, Rohde espoused clean, simple, honest designs. To accommodate smaller living spaces, he created furniture with dual purposes: a card table that turned into a dining table, a settee that folded back into a bed, tables ("rotorettes") that housed books and other items on rotating shelves. He loved this idea of interchangeability, demonstrated most notably in his Living-Dining Group--individual pieces that could go in either place and a radical departure from the standard living or dining room "suites" purchased at the time. And with the introduction of Rohde's Executive Office Group, the company entered the office furniture market.

Chronology of Herman Miller Company

1942

The Executive Office Group, designed by Gilbert Rohde, signals Herman Miller's entry into the office-furniture market. Modular and versatile, EOG is a precursor of systems furniture.

Herman Miller's Los Angeles showroom opens.

Charles and Ray Eames are commissioned by the Navy to develop lightweight, molded plywood leg splints.

1944

Gilbert Rohde dies, De Pree begins searching for a new design leader.

1945

After seeing an article in Life magazine on George Nelson and his Storagewall design, D.J. De Pree hires him to serve as the company's first design director.

1946

The Nelson Office designs the stylized "m" logo and introduces a new corporate image for Herman Miller.

New York's Museum of Modern Art installs a small exhibition called "New Furniture Designed by Charles Eames"--the museum's first one-man furniture show.

Nelson and De Pree recruit Charles and Ray Eames into the Herman Miller fold.

The Nelson platform bench is introduced.

The Eames molded plywood chair, molded plywood lounge chair, molded plywood folding screen, and molded plywood coffee table are introduced.

1947

Herman Miller gains exclusive market and distribution rights to the Eameses' award-winning molded plywood products. These rights are acquired from the Evans Products Company of Grand Haven, Michigan, which retains production rights.

1948

Herman Miller publishes and sells a bound, hardcover product catalog, written by George Nelson and designed by the Nelson Office. The catalog, which articulates Herman Miller's philosophy and principles about business and design, will become a collector's item.

Herman Miller introduces a glass-topped coffee table designed by Isamu Noguchi.

1949

Molded plywood manufacturing moves from the Grand Haven, Michigan, manufacturing site of Evans Products to a Herman Miller manufacturing facility in Zeeland. Another manufacturing plant, which later becomes the Eames Studio, opens in Venice, California.

Charles Eames (1907-78) and Ray Eames (1912-88) gave shape to America’s twentieth century.

Their lives and work represented the nation’s defining social movements: the West Coast’s coming-of-age, the economy’s shift from making goods to the producing information, and the global expansion of American culture. .

The Eameses embraced the era’s visionary concept of modern design as an agent of social change, elevating it to a national agenda.

Their evolution from furniture designers to cultural ambassadors demonstrated their boundless talents and the overlap of their interests with those of their country.

In a rare era of shared objectives, the Eameses partnered with the federal government and the country’s top businesses to lead the charge to modernize postwar America

• With a grand sense of adventure, Charles and Ray Eames turned their curiosity and boundless enthusiasm into creations that established them as a truly great husband-and-wife design team.

• Their unique synergy led to a whole new look in furniture. Lean and modern. Playful and functional. Sleek, sophisticated, and beautifully simple. That was and is the 'Eames look.'

• That look and their relationship with Herman Miller started with molded plywood chairs in the late 1940s and includes the world-renowned Eames lounge chair, now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

• Charles and Ray achieved their monumental success by approaching each project the same way: Does it interest and intrigue us? Can we make it better? Will we have 'serious fun' doing it?

• They loved their work, which was a combination of art and science, design and architecture, process and product, style and function. 'The details are not details,' said Charles. 'They make the product.'

• A problem-solver who encouraged experimentation among his staff, Charles once said his dream was 'to have people working on useless projects. These have the germ of new concepts.'

• Their own concepts evolved over time, not overnight. As Charles noted about the development of the Molded Plywood Chairs, 'Yes, it was a flash of inspiration,' he said, 'a kind of 30-year flash.'

• With these two, one thing always seemed to lead to another. Their revolutionary work in molded plywood led to their breakthrough work in molded fibreglass seating. A magazine contest led to their highly innovative 'Case Study' house.

• Their love of photography led to film making, including a huge seven-screen presentation at the Moscow World's Fair in 1959, in a dome designed by their friend and colleague, Buckminster Fuller.

• Graphic design led to showroom design, toy collecting to toy inventing. And a wooden plank contraption, rigged up by their friend, director Billy Wilder for taking naps, led to their acclaimed chaise design.

• A design critic once said that this extraordinary couple 'just wanted to make the world a better place.' That they did. They also made it a lot more interesting.

Molded plywood chairs designed by Charles and Ray Eames, manufactured by Herman Miller

Molded plywood screen designed by Charles and Ray Eames, manufactured by Herman Miller

Cast aluminum and leather chairs, designed by Charles and Ray Eames, manufactured by Herman Miller.

The Eames lounge chair, manufactured by Herman Miller

Model 670 was the first design for the luxury end of the market by Charles and Ray Eames. Designed in 1956 it retailed for $634 in 1957. The Lounge chair is unashamedly masculine, exuding a sense of executive power and comfort through its generous proportions and use of high-quality materials. At first glance, the chair looks much more complex than other pieces by Eames, but it is actually built according to the same principle as their simple plywood chairs. Three moulded plywood elements joined together by metal components and, with a lower frame, form the basic structure.

The Merchandise Mart, completed in 1931, catered exclusively to the wholesale trade. The largest building in the world at the time of its completion, the Mart continues to host the NEOCON trade show annually.

Open plan office furniture, or systems furniture as it is called today, defines and separates work spaces without the use of constructed partitions. Today it is estimated that more than 30% of U.S. businesses use systems Furniture. The practice of commercial interior design today is a specialty, requiring knowledge, skill, and an ability to bring large and small scale architectural components together into a smoothly functioning environment.

With the decline in new construction and the dwindling availability of prime urban real estate, tenant work will continue to be a primary focus for many design practices.

Base Building and Tenant Improvements The commercial office building shell and core, which include essential services, such as the HVAC system, elevators, and toilet rooms, is commonly referred to as the 'base building'. Tenant improvements are those materials and constructions that form the infill, responding to the tenant's needs, which are not part of the base building. The base building standard, or building standard, is a package of typical tenant improvements provided by, and sometimes required of, the landlord. By standardizing building components like suite entry doors, suite signage, lighting fixtures, and window treatments, the landlord can maintain coherence in design, and consistency in maintenance routines throughout the building. Usually there is a tenant improvement allowance to cover standard items that will be installed at no cost to the tenant. The quantity of tenant improvements is usually described per square foot of rentable space.

For example, 1 telephone jack every 125 square feet of leased space, 1 door every 300 square feet of leased space, et cetera.

Sometimes the allowance is stated as a certain amount of money to be allocated per square foot of leased space.

A lease is an agreement between the property owner and the tenant.

There are standard improvements that landlords provide to tenants as part of the rental rate. The document that describes these improvements to the rented space is the work letter (see page 7 in "Specifying Interiors") which is attached to, and becomes part of the lease.

Measuring Commercial Space

There are about a dozen different methods of measuring commercial office space in current use. All methods make similar distinctions between gross area, usable area, and rentable area, but they differ in how these areas are calculated.

The building gross area, defined as the "construction area" by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), is the floor area within the exterior face of the building including the thickness of the exterior wall. It is the total constructed space. This measurement is used in evaluating building efficiency, and in comparing construction costs between projects. The rentable area is usually defined as the interior floor area excluding vertical penetrations (stairs, duct chases, elevator shafts, et cetera). This measurement is often used to determine the income producing capability of a building. The usable area is the floor area that is inhabitable by the tenant. This measurement is used in planning and designing the space.