首页即时动态海沃氏：打造人文办公空间的故事

海沃氏：打造人文办公空间的故事

来源：家居百科时间：2025年05月13日 14:40

Haworth: Designing the Future of the Office Space Welcome to Haworth

In the pristine forests of Holland, Michigan, the Haworth design studio basks in the morning light. Designer Claire gently runs her fingers along the edge of a recycled aluminum panel, the subtle curve of which will determine the comfort of the next-generation office chair. For over seventy years, this scene has been a daily occurrence at the heart of this global leader in office furniture, telling the eternal story of people, space, and efficiency.

The story of Haworth began in 1948, in the hopeful post-war era, when Old Haworth turned his garage into the workshop for his first metal chair, an accidental masterpiece that ignited modern office aesthetics. The combination of curved steel tubes and canvas redefined the perception of office chairs, symbolizing a new era of work philosophy—efficiency should go hand in hand with comfort. Today, as you walk through the historic corridors of the Haworth headquarters, you can still feel this初心 in every generation of products: from the zero-gravity chair prototype designed for NASA in the 1960s, to the revolutionary modular office system in the 1980s, to the smart workstations equipped with biometric technology today, all telling the same story of humanism.

In a century-old European-style building in Jing'an District, Shanghai, Haworth conducted a time-traveling conversation with space. Designers preserved the original Art Deco lines of the building, yet redefined the interior space with a futuristic, fluid office system. The seemingly randomly placed meeting pods are actually the result of precise acoustic calculations; the adjustable office desks feature Shanghai stone gate brick patterns, evoking the collective memory of the city when touched. This respect and innovation for local culture allows Haworth to maintain its unique localization while globalizing.

In the labs of Haworth, there are many unseen gentle revolutions. Materials scientists spent three years cultivating a special mycelium, finally creating a biodegradable seat cushion; the human factors team tracked the sitting posture data of 3,000 users from different ethnic backgrounds, finding that East Asians need additional lumbar support angles; even a team specializing in coffee stains developed a nanocoating that keeps office desks spotless even after spilling lattes. These seemingly trivial researches eventually converge into Haworth's unique product philosophy—true design should precede people in discovering their needs.

In the headquarters of a technology giant in Silicon Valley, Haworth created an office ecosystem that breathes. The tiny sensors embedded in the desks can automatically adjust environmental lighting based on the user's pressure level; the transparency of the glass partitions in the conference rooms changes with the heat of the discussion; even the sofas in the rest area are equipped with heart rate monitoring functions, subtly vibrating to remind employees when they are tired. This system, once launched, increased the company's employee satisfaction by 37%, a number behind Haworth's firm belief that "technology should serve humanity."

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris has permanently collected Haworth's "Silk Cocoon" series workstations introduced in 2004, the curator writing on the exhibit label, "This series of works predicts the office form after the pandemic era." Indeed, as early as twenty years before remote work became a trend, Haworth proposed the "Third Space" theory, believing that the future of work will occur in the blurred zones between offices, homes, and social places. Now, their metaverse office system is in the testing phase, with wearable devices that allow users to feel the texture of real wooden tables in virtual conference rooms, a blend of virtual and reality that might be the prelude to the next office revolution.

As the evening dusk falls over Lake Michigan, the never-extinguished design light at the Haworth headquarters remains lit. In the glow, young designers are sketching the office scene of 2050. Below, in the museum, the first metal chair from 1948 is displayed. These two time spaces overlap here, outlining a brand's consistent commitment: office space is not just a container for work, but also a poetic habitat that inspires creativity and nurtures the soul. In this algorithm-driven era, Haworth still believes that the best design should be like an old friend, knowing the silent companionship.