As the winner of Work, Redefined – The Design Challenge 2021, SLAB put community at the core of its imagined workplace. Now SLAB is heading to the US and Herman Miller is offering the chance for you to go along too.

After winning Herman Miller’s Work, Redefined – The Design Challenge with its vision for the highly adaptable ‘social office’ last year, multidisciplinary design studio SLAB is heading to Michigan, US, to visit Herman Miller’s global home, which became MillerKnoll’s.

Now MillerKnoll is inviting you to take a front row seat for three days, to accompany the team from SLAB as they experience iconic sites that have played an important role in Herman Miller’s 122-year history. 

During their US adventure, the SLAB team will also meet a host of design visionaries whose influence on design is felt today. 

To be in with a chance to enjoy this trip of a lifetime, simply follow Herman Miller Australia @hermanmilleraustralia on Instagram and view its stories between 3 and 6 October. 

The whole experience will be covered on the social platform, so that you too can discover the people and places that have shaped not only Herman Miller, but also design history as a whole. 

SLAB’s ‘social office’ vision, which won Herman Miller’s Work, Redefined – The Design Challenge and resulted in it being selected for this once-in-a-lifetime trip, was groundbreaking in many different aspects.

SLAB’s idea of a state-of-the-art, connected, communal and configurable workplace is a clear split from the workplace model based on formal work and productivity, made redundant by a global pandemic.

The Kit of Pods is probably the pinnacle of SLAB’s vision for a revolutionary workplace, with each pod responding to one or more of the principles behind SLAB’s future office.

The Tech pod, for example, is an acoustically minded space. 

SLAB envisaged that it could be ordered online directly from Herman Miller in a range of sizes, with different components and configurations, depending on the individual organisation’s needs. 

Comprising fully recycled and recyclable materials, each pod is designed to be 3D printed, resulting in speedy delivery of all the components organisations may require for their offices.

The Temple is about people thriving when doing things they crave and love, whether that’s solo, or in a group, semi-private setting.

Founded in 2017, SLAB stresses the importance of making space for the individual, and this became the driver for the Melbourne-based design studio putting community at the core of its imagined workplace.

As a direct consequence of the pandemic aftermath, SLAB has taken the best of the social experience at work.

Its strategy includes taking a community master plan approach to the office. SLAB put collaborative space and focus space on a grid that can be expanded and contracted with ease to suit density needs. 

By bringing people together, rather than spreading them out, SLAB foresees that offices will be able to maintain the ‘vibe’ that it believes is essential to the workspace.