The large dimensions give the peculiar character of this work within the overall production of Frank Gehry's workshop. This is a huge building for the headquarters of the Herman Miller furniture company: an operations center for the entire western United States, located next to the capital of California. The program calls for a huge area of flexibly usable halls and associated offices and offices with restaurant and other services.

This extensive program is joined by the infinity of the desert landscape of Sacramento, on the other side of the Sierra, dominated by the sky. All of this seems to reinforce the geometry of the project, as opposed to the disorderly tendency of Gehry's workshop. The large building is fragmented into rectangular modules, reducing the program to more reasonable dimensions and refraining from expressing its global dimension. These Cartesian boxes also play, like the elements of the Winton house, with the four corners; as one is missing, the square plaza that is the heart of the project is allowed to be skewed. The free side is left as the entrance to the complex, where the architect places his usual toys: a canopy on three legs in the form of a column, a gibbet and a crutch. The Herman Miller building thus presents long facades, covered with large galvanized sheet metal plates, which should shine on a site preserved as a natural garden...[+]