4 days ago
A first look inside MillerKnoll's new million object archive
The magic of an archive often has to do with discovery—of an idea that never made it out of a sketchbook, the behind-the-scenes lore only a handful of confidantes are privy to, and the mundane items that time transforms into holy grails. Now, the field of modern design has a new archive to salivate over, courtesy of MillerKnoll.
Composed of over one million objects and held in a 12,000-square-foot facility at MillerKnoll's headquarters in Western Michigan, the archive includes visible storage; a reading room for researchers; and an exhibition space. There, visitors can spy everything from the streamlined objects Gilbert Rohde designed for the 1933 World's Fair to prototypes of the Eames Action Office and pattern-drenched postmodernist chairs by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. It's a who's-who list of modern design history, all under one roof.
But the archive—designed in collaboration with the New York-based consultancy Standard Issue —is more than a repository for historic artifacts; it's something that can help develop new ideas and tell untold stories. 'The great excitement for me is not one particular item, not one particular narrative; but the endless opportunity that it presents to make more connections,' says Ben Watson, the chief creative and product officer at MillerKnoll.
The Story of Modern Design
History has been an important part of the individual brands that comprise MillerKnoll, which includes Herman Miller, Knoll, Design Within Reach, Hay, and Muuto, among others. In silos, they told a company-specific story; all together the collection represents the myriad narratives that shaped how modern furniture became a business, from ambitious ideas to the nuts and bolts of how objects actually get made.
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