Haworth's new global headquarters in Holland, Mich., is now open for business in more than a strict sense thanks to abundant glass, ample outdoor views, open floorplates and an emphasis on collaboration throughout.

Designed by Perkins+Will | Eva Maddox Branded Environments, One Haworth Center features a total renovation of 300,000 sq. ft., including a new 1,000-sq.-ft. façade and a three-story, 35,000-sq.-ft. glass atrium. "This opening marks a new beginning for Haworth and for the community," said president and CEO Franco Bianchi during a grand opening celebration on May 21 that included a ribbon-cutting ceremony that also included Haworth chairman of the board Dick Haworth, USGBC founder and president Rick Fedrizzi, assistant secretary for manufacturing and services for the United States Commerce Department Admiral William Sutton, architects from Perkins+Will, and a range of industry guests. "We built this building to practice what we preach and challenge how we do business, and we wanted to do it in a world-class way," noted Haworth.

"This is a defining moment," noted Eva Maddox, principal at Perkins+Will | Eva Maddox Branded Environments, who has been working with Haworth since 1983 and handled the interiors of the new space. "It gives Haworth the ability to really push its new vocabulary out there and to see its culture manifested in a 3-D space. Employees must walk the talk." On a similar note, Fedrizzi noted that "this is not a building that was just slapped together. It's a permanent structure built with love and integrity and it is going to change the way people think about their lives."

Registered for LEED-NC Gold certification, the new space features a number of sustainable initiatives. Although the construction added 20 percent more space, energy consumption as a whole has been reduced by 30 percent. During the deconstruction phase of the renovation process, over 98 percent of the old building was recycled including all but two percent of a total 3,566 yards of waste. Concrete floors and steel beams were reused in the new building, and over 321 tons of steel and 12.5 tons of other metals were recycled. Through a partnership with Aggregate Management, all window glass from the old building (a total of 9.23 tons) and 3.25 tons of concrete waste dust from the Haworth Kentwood manufacturing site was reused in new concrete construction blocks, in turn creating more than 8,000 blocks for One Haworth Center. In addition, 578,240 lbs of carpet tiles were recycles by either donation or reuse in other Haworth facilities. On a more micro scale, 75 gallons of hydraulic fluid was drained from elevators, then treated and reused.

The new façade, featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, spreads daylight throughout the building and into the 100-ft.-deep floorplates, as well as provides outdoor views for 90 percent of the 800+ workstations within. The atrium also features a green roof that, at 45,000 sq. ft., is one of the largest modular green roofs in North America. What's more, the atrium and abundant use of glass are not only meant to blur the line between indoors and out, but also to open up the space vertically. Employees at the ground-level café, for instance, can easily see up through the atrium to third floor balconies and entering into the space, visitors are given a clear view to all three floors.

In organizing the new space, Haworth researched employees' individual and team work habits to determine how to best cluster groups in the new floorplan. To further promote a sense of company-wide openness, previously private offices are now outfitted with floor-to-ceiling glass and high-level executives like Haworth and Bianchi are front and center in the mix. Employees, which at Haworth are dubbed "members," work in various arrangements of Haworth product across all three floors and among them are product showcases that allow the entire building to act as a showroom. One Haworth also includes the first Innovation Lab of New York-based Material ConneXion, featuring large-format materials samples from Material ConneXion's library with focuses on sustainability, illumination, processes, and functional surfaces.

While the new design and impressive elements like the atrium have already made a big impression on members and visitors alike, Bianchi says the biggest impact lies in the small details. “The big elements create the ‘wow' but once that disappears, the quality of the design remains,” he says. "We have a duty to challenge each other, our competitors, and the way we think about interiors."