Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
LUNAR cofounders Jeff Smith and Gerard Furbershaw sought to create a sculpturally oriented bench that provided social interaction opportunities for passersby in outdoor public places and museum and gallery exhibition spaces. People have an innate desire to engage, interact and play, yet there are a limited number of public spaces that enable this. Smith and Furbershaw looked to the playground seesaw for inspiration, as most people have experienced this form of interactive play as children.
While they may resemble the old, mid-century mission control panels from NASA, these switches are all modern. From Brooklyn-based lighting studio Juniper, Ground Control is a series of surface-mounted power accessories – double USB charger, electrical plug, toggle switch, and dimmer knob – for all of your latest lighting and tech gear, but re-imagined with a bit of NASA nostalgia.
This past week, Gensler’s Product Design practice debuted several new products at NeoCon 2017, which took place June 12-14 at The Merchandise Mart in Chicago. In total, Gensler collaborated on 11 new products that launched in Chicago ranging from textiles to lounge seating and sit/stand desks.
Creative innovations push the limits of convention in manufactured construction. Experience what happens when traditional craftsmanship and modern technology collide to create stunning timber frame structures.
In an intermingling of performance art, conceptual installation, and notable design history, Thom Browne is staging a scenographic tableau of historic desks at this year’s design miami/ basel. For the fair’s annual design at large program, the American fashion designer has assembled fifteen of the most significant desks from the last century — including pieces from the likes of jean prouvé and ron arad. Positioned opposite the vast grid of furniture is a conceptual landscape of trees and fabric animals, which Browne presented at his fall/winter men’s runway show back in 2014.
Digital technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D printing could help reduce waste during a design and construction project, suggests a new report from the British Council for Offices (BCO). “Virtual Reality and 3D Printing – Reducing waste in office construction through new technology” reviews the existing applications of these technologies and their ability to mitigate waste during the design and construction process.
American design retailer Luminaire (now part of Haworth) is presenting a retrospective of Italian architect and designer Antonio Citterio in its Chicago showroom. Coinciding with design fair Neocon, the exhibition highlights the connections between processes, products and designs in Citterio’s work, putting his pieces for brands such as B&B Italia, Vitra and Kartell in the spotlight.
New age of the office chair: an evolution from the chair as machine.
Barber & Osgerby have continued their collaboration with Vitra who tasked the designers with the objective of moving the language of office furniture away from the machine to be calm. The first office chair from Barber & Osgerby followed the guiding principle of 'full performance, quiet design', capturing their signature design precision, improving ergonomic comfort, whilst combining bold colours with straightforward linear shapes.
The Bundle is Opendesk’s latest furniture design, and it mirrors the efficiency and simplicity of its other designs. The company collaborated with London product designer Thor ter Kulve, who designed the desk so that it could be made from one plywood sheet and could easily be replicated through Opendesk’s maker network.
Subtle shapes of letters peek out from British designer Jasper Morrison's newly expanded T&O furniture collection for Japanese brand Maruni.
Task chairs are intended for work, lounge chairs are meant for relaxing, and sofas are for Netflixing. But public benches? They’re whatever the people sitting on them decide. At Kunsthal Aarhus–a contemporary art museum in Aarhus, the second-largest city in Denmark–a new public seating installation, called Oui, plays up their role as a stage for communing with nature and collective interaction.
Melbourne-based design studio Dowel Jones is a master in crafting functional furniture and objects for daily life. The studio specialises in simple furnishings, lighting and accessories made of everyday hard materials; powder-coated metals and natural wood being staple materials in the studio’s designs. For its materiality alone, Dowel Jones’s latest project is particularly noteworthy. As one of three studios invited to collaborate with Kvadrat and Maharam as part of the brands’ collaboration with the curated online hub Local Design, Dowel Jones has ventured into soft furnishings and upholstery. It’s completely untrodden territory.
Graduating from design school at Purdue University at the height of the recession in 2010 left me struggling to find my path among the layoffs and hiring freezing. My first job out of school was designing research laboratories. My career path then meandered through a myriad of corporate positions from facilities planning to a furniture dealer to working at a furniture manufacturer. Finally, I landed my dream job at a design firm! I gained such a wide variety of knowledge along the way, and I felt like I finally made it!
The question goes, “Do you think a guy that ran a furniture company is the right pick to steer Ford through the coming upheaval?”
Because a vast show like Clerkenwell Design Week is about as easy to digest as a whale omelette, visitors often find themselves discussing with other people what is worth seeing and, perhaps more importantly, what they think its themes are. At this year’s show, the fine weather meant it was possible for people to occupy the pavements with a drink and share a general feeling that in terms of workplace design, there were few, if any, standout products and that most of the themes were now pretty well understood.
Among the objects currently displayed in the Cantor Art Center’s exhibition cases are Henry Dreyfuss’s 1953 glossy black telephone model for Bell Telephone Laboratories and Charles and Ray Eames’s 1960s orange fiberglass chair with a desk arm for Herman Miller.
British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby have masterminded everything from commuter rail cars and the 2012 London Olympic torch to installations for Sony and sofas for Knoll. But one thing that the studio– which has been around for over 20 years–hasn’t produced? An office chair.
About four years ago, the Switzerland-based furniture manufacturer Vitra approached Barber Osgerby with a challenge: Design the next-generation of task chairs. “It sounds really boring when you say it like that–‘Oh my god, another office chair!’–but for industrial designers and furniture designers, it’s really the ultimate challenge,” Osgerby tells Co.Design.
Barber Osgerby’s answer was the Pacific chair, an ergonomic, technical office chair masquerading as a lounge chair, which will make its debut at NeoCon–the commercial furniture industry’s Super Bowl–in June.
Mariana Amatullo is vice president of Designmatters at ArtCenter College of Design. She spoke to Doreen Lorenzo for Designing Women, a series of interviews with brilliant women in the design industry.
We talk with Tom Kelly, a partner at IDEO, about the definition of innovation, how to take back your creative confidence, and the habits that can shape not only your current design team, but the up-and-coming design leaders of the world.
The word “innovation” has gotten overused. Kelley says innovation, at the most fundamental level, is a fresh idea that’s feasible and adds value. Ideas alone are not innovation.
Crews’s design credentials are expanding beyond his supporting role. With a new furniture collection produced by Bernhardt, released just in time for NYCxDesign this week, he is an emerging designer in his own right. Inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the pieces play on organic forms like lily pads and the smooth stones of the Nile River.
