George Nelson

Action office n° 64916/64940

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Product Description

George Nelson

Action office n° 64916/64940

Polished aluminum, chrome-plated tubular steel, varnished wood, plastic and vinyl.

H: 84cm  W: 123cm  D: 83cm

Herman Miller, Inc., Zeeland, Michigan

USA, circa 1968

Originally designed in 1964, production time: 1964-1971

Herman Miller, the American manufacturer, set up a research department in 1960 headed by Robert Probst. One of its central tasks was a long-term study of the problems associated with office work. George Nelson was the designer responsible for the project , he developed a completely new system of office furniture that could be adapted to the changing requirements of people and their work in office environments.

Without limiting working surfaces or restricting freedom of movement, the system offers – for example by means of a hanging file attached at the front end – direct access to materials which are in view at all times. There is a flat drawer under the lectern tabletop for writing utensils. Materials left lying on the table and hanging files can be covered over at the end of the task with a pull-down shutter.

George Nelson

George Nelson (1908–1986) was an American industrial designer and one of the founders of American Modernism. While Director of Design for the Herman Miller furniture company, Nelson and his design studio, George Nelson Associates, Inc., designed from his start in the mid-1940s until the mid-1980s much of the 20th century's most iconic modernist furniture.

George Nelson Associates, Inc. partnered with most of the modernist designers of the time. This was both the result of Nelson’s time as a magazine editor, and because of Nelson's writing. His skill as a writer helped legitimize and stimulate the field of industrial design by contributing to the creation of Industrial Design magazine in 1953.

Nelson traveled through Europe, where he met a number of the modernist pioneers, a few years later he returned to the United States and through his writing he introduced the work of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Gio Ponti to North America.