Steelcase is known for its study of work environments and employee behaviors. By now you must know close to everything, so how do the same behaviors inspire new designs?
That's the million dollar question. I would say that we know a lot about behaviors; we know a lot the nature of work. But, I would definitely say we a we are far from understanding them completely, and that leaves plenty of room for insight and research, which is core to Steelcase's research and design agenda moving forward.

Ultimately, we see design as moved from simply designing stuff to designing experiences. The experience of the user in particular is core to what we study and, basically, when you think of how complex that experience is, from the human experience extrapolated to the work experience, it's incredibly deep and complex. We're learning new stuff everyday and that's what we go on, until we run out of gas, are new insights to use in the development of smart products to solve our customer's problems.

We have a huge focus on the user, the individual at work, but when you think about health and business and enterprise and how those behaviors create the concept of work culture, it's so multi-layered and so amazingly interesting for us as researchers and designers, that I think it's an endless wellspring of ideas and inspiration. And the cool thing is, as culture changes and society changes and the work dynamic changes, it continually refreshes itself. It's like pressing the refresh button on your computer screen. The website's the same but there's new information popping up.

Do you see people who work in Steelcase environments take information they get from their work places and implement those ideas into their home environments?
We think that, especially in American society, there is a very permeable boundary between the work experience and the private experience, and that it's basically dependant on personal goals, individual aspiration and self image.

For me as a designer, it's pretty seamless. What I think about at work and what I think about at home and on weekends has all become one big thing called My Experience. Some people are better at opening the door and saying, "I'm at work," and then closing it and saying, 'Im going home,' but nevertheless, we see it as a contiguous experience.

What I see is a desire for people to personalize and relate to their workspaces as they do their home spaces. Space personalization is a big deal. It's really important, especially for people today, to have a connection to their space and have a sense of ownership and a sense of pride which says, 'This speaks about me.' So what we try to do when we develop products for the work place is to create them to have a restrained sophistication at their foundation which allows people to create their own signature.

We want the experience from work to home to be contiguous in a healthy way and allow people to have the smartest workspaces.

On the other hand, when people take work home, when they leave the workspace there's not a clear cut between those two experiences. We think that the more people learn about their own work process through interaction with our products the more they are likely to go home and understand that space really matters in profound and intriguing ways. In the past, maybe spatial issues were a question of taste, but you know how diverse people's interests and likes are. There can be a new underlying intelligence to that taste which can be added to it without changing the big, visual, defining characteristics.

People might organize their homes in a different way, or say, 'I've noticed that at work when I've done this and this...I can apply that to my kitchen and dining rooms, or to the work experience of my home office.' They might take a heightened awareness to looking at their home space.

It depends on people's sensibilities too. We aspire to have a restrained sophistication. Then, as you move toward the user, we seek to be more timely and develop a more sensual sophistication in a product that engages people viscerally. At the end of the scales, we want to create a more intelligent, quiet, inspiring atmosphere for the work experience, and we think that that can extrapolate into the home, too.

Do you take what you know into your home?
Yes totally. I was lucky enough that my wife's a doctor but she's the daughter of an architect, I met her when we were living in Berlin -- she is my best, but also my toughest client.

We share a lot of the same sensibilities and we looked very hard when we moved to Michigan to find a place that had as few interior walls as possible. Then we took down some of those. And the ones that are left have holes in them to allow for a lot of communication and the ability to network, to have a fluid experiential dynamic like we see in office spaces. We know it's not for everybody.

Recently the question was asked of me, 'What would you do if you weren't an architect or a designer?' I can't answer it because it seems to be this seamless thing. To me, it's incredibly important to have that reflect in my work atmosphere and in my home atmosphere. It's like butter. My mentor John Hejduk said, "it's butter. Any way you cut it, it's butter."

Tell me more about him.
John Hejduk was the dean of Cooper Union architecture school in New York. He was an incredible thinker and really influential in the field of architecture and architectural theory. He basically taught me how to think, and revealed so many mysteries of space and architecture to me and a bunch of people who had the good fortune to study with him.

Who else did you look up to?
You know I saw that interview you guys did with Ettore Sottsass. All of us probably try to aspire to be half as creative as he's been consistently throughout his entire career. He's a great example of what I was saying about that contiguous experience. He's Ettore Sottsass designer and architect all the time, 24/7.

What does a design need in order to be made by Steelcase?
Steelcase really leads the charge of sustainability with our cradle to cradle philosophy. All the products moving forward with Steelcase right down to the chemical level, retain things that are responsible to the environment and to the people who use them. Then, from my perspective, people have to look at it and go, 'Damn that's beautiful.' Obviously we're in the business of having a healthy enterprise ourselves, and we have to make sure we launch profitable products that are responsible to our enterprise.

Do you ever want to design anything personally, outside of Steelcase? Things other than office chairs and work environments?
I always say that it's hard to find an architect or designer with a hobby because our work is our hobby. So yes. I've spent the last couple years designing a house for myself and my family.

At work I'm focused on architecture and furniture and technology in the context of the work environment. As an architect, if I don't build every 5 years or so, I get itchy fingers. So I'm constantly designing houses and things like that. And the great thing about Steelcase Inc. is that we have several brands and several product types, everything from tech. to lounge seating etcetera. I'm always spinning off ideas that aren't core to the Steelcase brand but might be appropriate to our other companies.

My sketch books are full of porcelain objects, tableware, ideas for bags and clothes and technology and glasses. It's just sort of -- the ideas don't stop because of a job description. I'm constantly designing other things in my spare time. When I'm not with my kids or my family skiing or something like that, I'm grabbing some time to noodle on an idea that I'll eventually get to in ten years.

You know, I hear that a lot. Designers seem to always have a cache of sketch book ideas awaiting some attention in the future.
Obviously there's a lot more to wanting to do this than the money itself. Part of is just this drive to do interesting things and, I think, contribute. I do believe profoundly that the designer and the architect have a responsibility to make life better.

If you look at things that way, designers have deep experience in approaching the tasks they have creating space, making objects and looking at things to make them safer and healthier. But at the same time, designers tend to be good generalists. If you look at that as meaning general problem solving, you know, I'm walking through airports and going, 'I can do that,' or,  'I'd do that differently,' or, 'I can do that better,' or, 'I'd change that.' You're walking down the street and you see a street sign and you say, "If that was this way, it'd be clearer and more interesting to look at." In a way that's the curse of the designer too.

You guys are never satisfied. What's the thing you've created that you're most satisfied with, though?
I believe that would be the most current iteration of the Steelcase portfolio, and I can't take personal credit for that. I have an amazing team. I would say in a sense it's designing the team that I get to work with everyday. Bringing the people from Berlin or Los Angeles or San Francisco or Boston, all the people who've joined us since I've been here.

I would say designing my own work experience has been the thing I'm most satisfied with--bringing the people I get to work with together.