CASE STUDY
Following a substantial grant from the Learning and Skills Council, City of Westminster College, located in central London, was presented with the opportunity to move from deteriorating premises into a superb new Paddington Green Campus that better supports 21st-century teaching and learning approaches.
City of Westminster College is vastly diverse, not only in its student body—which ranges in age from 16
Liberty best suited our needs—it was the most comfortable, had the right feel, had a sensible design, and looked good without being too fancy.
Everyone who sat in the chair was very pleased.
City of Westminster College to 80 plus—but also in the courses it offers. Given this diversity, creating a unified community was an integral—and sometimes challenging—goal of the new design plan. The College needed a new space that would simultaneously meet the needs of a modern learning environment, exhibit a timeless and flexible design, and allow all students and staff to find areas suiting their individual interpretations of “comfort.” And when it came to one of the most important aspects of this new and improved space— the seating—the same high standards applied.
In deciding which task chair to select, it was imperative that the seating choice be intuitive and

CASE STUDY CITY OF WESTMINSTER COLLEGE flexible enough to accommodate the
College’s vastly diverse community.
A “hot desking” environment was to be implemented, requiring the task seating to be adjustable to the individual quickly, easily, and without the need for a lengthy instruction manual.
most comfortable, had the right feel, had a sensible design, and looked good without being too fancy.
Everyone who sat in the chair was very pleased.”
Following user trials, including six other task seating solutions,
Humanscale’s Liberty task chair proved most popular with students, teachers, office staff and management alike. In addition to exhibiting a complementary aesthetic, Liberty was simply the most intuitive and easy to adjust— perfect for the “hot desking” environment of the College.
In praise of the Liberty chair, David
Pigden, Deputy Principal of City of
Westminster College, says, “Liberty best suited our needs—it was the
Today, in its final, complete form, the new Paddington Green
Campus—which includes the artful work of schmidt hammer lassen architects, interior design by Dyer
Associates, and Humanscale’s
Liberty seating—possesses a timeless, visibly high-quality aesthetic and has won two major architecture awards since it opened.
The College now has a learning environment that’s flexible enough to support over 7,000 students and staff. As Pigden notes, “Staff are delighted by how well students have responded to the new building, the new space—and the new way of working. In terms of productivity, the number of applications has increased by about 30% as a result of the move, attendance to open days is up, and there has been a noted improvement in behaviour.
We now operate in a newer, better way.”
Because of its innovative design, Liberty was the only office chair included in the
2007 National Design Triennial at the
Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National
Design Museum. Its tri-panel Form-Sensing
Mesh Technology offers perfect lumbar support for every body type without external devices or manual adjustments. And its weight-sensitive recline ensures that all users have perfect recline support without having to make a single adjustment. With
40% fewer parts and 40% less material than the average task chair, Liberty established a new bar for sustainability in the highperformance task chair category.