4.30.12 | Zeeland, MI | Herman Miller, the pioneering American furniture company with a record of design innovations that have helped define modern home and commercial interiors since the 1930’s, will open a Pop Up Shop in New York City on May 9, 2012, officially introducing the Herman Miller Collection to the largest metro market in North America. Located at 68 Wooster Street (between Spring and Broome) in the heart of SoHo, with 6,000 sq. feet of product display, the shop will be open through July 1st.

The shop marks the first public display of the renewed Herman Miller Collection, a comprehensive portfolio of products that offers the ability to create complete environments—from the backyard to the boardroom—with solutions that serve commercial, home, and hospitality spaces. Taking its cue directly from the 1952 writings of George Nelson, Herman Miller’s then director of design, the portfolio represents “the continuing creation of a permanent collection designed to meet fully the requirements for modern living.”

Through richly detailed lifestyle vignettes, with a complementary schedule of design-related programming, the shop will tell design stories past and present while inspiring professional designers, consumers, and commercial end users. While the Pop Up Shop is intended to serve as a showroom for the commercial architectural and interior design community, it will also be open to the public seven days a week.

The Herman Miller Collection’s carefully curated portfolio combines existing and newly reintroduced iconic modern furniture pieces, as well as the contemporary work of some of today’s best known designers. The offering will present some 200 product families in its first year, with many of them showcased in the SoHo space, including several pieces previewed in advance of their retail availability this Fall. Store vignettes will represent both residential and commercial applications, providing solutions for casual office environments, executive offices, meeting rooms, dining rooms, living rooms and even outdoor environments.

The Collection includes familiar and well-loved pieces from the company’s early collaborations with the giants of 20^th design, many reintroduced after decades or freshly reinterpreted with new materials and manufacturing technologies. Names like Eames, Nelson, Noguchi, Girard, Bennett, and Burdick are the foundation for the program.

Not simply an exercise in nostalgia, however, the collection also includes recent award-winning contemporary designs by some of today’s best known practitioners from Italian alliance partners Magis and Mattiazzi. These highly respected design houses represent the work of Konstantin Grcic, Jasper Morrison, the brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Steffano Giovannoni, Nitzan Cohen, Naoto Fukasawa, Marcel Wanders, Sam Hecht and Kim Collin.

The Collection’s final, vital elements are wholly new works from Herman Miller to be introduced this Summer and beyond. In the queue are designs by Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck, Leon Ransmeier, Sam Hecht and Kim Collin, to enhance and extend The Collection’s reach and service to virtually every space in modern life.

The Herman Miller Collection is available now through Herman Miller’s commercial dealers and retailers (such as Design Within Reach) across North America, and via the company’s online store at www.hermanmiller.com. Global availability will follow in later 2012.