commentOne Haworth Center
BusinessWeek/Architectural Record Awards Winner
Haworth’s C.E.O. and president, Franco Bianchi, knew that his company’s new headquarters had to be more than just an office complex. Haworth, a design firm specializing in work-space solutions, needed a showroom and laboratory for displaying and testing its products in action. The new design couldn’t just be a “face-lift” of the old building, says Bianchi. Perkins+Will principal Eva Maddox notes that Haworth wanted “an environment that would help them change their culture” from wasteful to sustainable, from fixed to flexible. “They went from being a furniture company to a work-space company,” says Maddox.
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The new headquarters was built on the site of Haworth’s old headquarters. “We kept a lot of the existing structure in the end,” says Perkins+Will principal Ralph Johnson, FAIA. Much of what was discarded in renovation was recycled or donated to schools. A three-story glass envelope replaced a concrete facade, giving 90 percent of employees access to natural light. To minimize heat loss in the Michigan winters, the triple-glazed windows were used in the atrium, and a green sedum roof covers the building.
Bianchi sees an integral relationship between the parts and the whole of the office. The company’s goal, he says, isn’t “developing great objects that stand alone, but creating great interiors that come from great parts,” all of which fit into the space. Nearly all of the building’s interiors are composed of Haworth products: “Our design team worked very closely with theirs,” notes Maddox.
One Haworth Center is designed to accommodate visitors, who, on seeing the company’s products in use and in context, have driven up sales in the past year. The new building itself seems to be a draw — customer visits are up some 300 percent so far this year compared to 2007. For Bianchi, “This is not just a building”; it is an ethos in glass and steel, a shift from outmoded models of the workplace. Maddox adds, “The architecture enabled a culture shift.”
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