“It’s both and,” says Joseph White of the open-versus-closed debate that has dominated conversations about the workspace since, seemingly, time immemorial. (Though in actuality, it’s just been going on for a few years.) As Director of Workplace Strategy, Design, and Management at Herman Miller, he believes in the idea of purposeful variety, a practical concept developed over decades across the organization’s many disciplines—and formalized now as a key concept within what Herman Miller calls Living Office®. Purposeful variety runs across all variables—from furniture selection to color to organization to layout—and at its core is a deep and profound understanding of how people in the workplace operate, and what they need.
