PRESENTED BY

 FRIDAY APRIL 16, 2021

The Upfront

Herman Miller Explores new "Purchasing Journey" with Herman Miller Professional eCommerce Experience

Herman Miller continues their streak of innovating in products, markets and marketing.

Wednesday, Herman Miller announced the launch of Herman Miller Professional, a new eCommerce experience built for small to mid-size businesses looking to purchase online to outfit or update their offices. The site comes at a perfect time as companies think through their post-pandemic workspaces. The new eCommerce experience is simple to navigate, has a curated set of products across Herman Miller’s family of brands, provides business pricing on hundreds of styles, includes easy to share project boards, and provides a supportive shopping experience with live chat support. In other words, it’s a game changer for a major maker of office furniture after decades of using an old dealer-based selling model for smaller projects.

“As a company with a foot in both the retail and contract worlds, we need to continue to evolve our experiences to fit the needs of these two diverse groups, especially in contract, where the size of our customers range from a dozen employees to thousands,” says Ben Groom, Chief Digital Officer at Herman Miller. “Each sector has certain expectations of how they would like their purchasing journey to work. From the moment a customer accesses one of our sites to the moment their product arrives, our goal is to exceed their expectations, customize experiences, and ensure every customer feels they’re getting the support and resources they need to make decisions every step of the way.”

Herman Miller Professional directly supports business customers looking to place simple orders without the need for design services or a purchasing contract. The product portfolio is curated specifically for this audience and provides custom quoting on products.

“This is just the beginning,” adds Groom. “we have a whole series of upgrades planned. Small to mid-sized businesses have varied needs and we will continue to expand our product assortment to meet these needs. We believe we will set the industry standard.”

“This is a huge win for both our contract customers and our dealers,” says John Michael, President of North America Contract at Herman Miller. “Herman Miller Professional is designed for customers looking to explore a curated inventory on their own and place quick orders. Because this is exclusively for companies rather than individuals, customers can also tap into exclusive business discounts. For these customers, Herman Miller Professional is a supportive and easy option to expedite low volume orders. For our dealers, Herman Miller Professional enhances their ability to serve customers by speeding up the placing of smaller orders, allowing them to focus on more complex orders that need more support and resources.”

At launch, customers will be able to browse over 450 different products available for purchase from Herman Miller, Design Within Reach, HAY, naughtone, and Colebrook Bosson Saunders that are simple to assemble and easy to ship. Customer service will be available by phone, email, and live chat. In the future, the product assortment will be expanded to include products with more complex assembly, which will leverage the Herman Miller dealer network for fulfillment and installation.

Herman Miller Professional is available in the United States for the initial launch with plans to expand into other regions in the future.

Specifying American Products Helps the Environment and the Bottom Line

Gensler’s Amie Keener shares how specifying American products can help designers improve overall project schedules and costs, while also helping the environment.

Design professionals can play a bigger role in climate change by reducing carbon footprint. And, they can start in their own community. Designers have a lot of choices when it comes to specifying products, and it’s important to understand where these products are coming from. If you don’t know, ask your product representative, or spend a few quick moments researching prior to ordering. In past year, we have seen some clients hesitate to start projects. One of these reasons may be a result of supply chain challenges and product availability.

A Designer’s Responsibility

Designers are generally not responsible for the means and methods of construction because that falls under the general contractor’s scope. Design professionals can influence the construction schedules, but overall management of the construction schedule is the contractor’s responsibility.

In the past year, one of the negative impacts of COVID has been extended construction schedules, likely due to a number limitations present on job sites, permit delays, and disrupted supply chains. Most designers have a good understanding of the challenge’s contractors face under normal circumstances. Add in the pandemic and the result is greater complexities for general contractors.

Designers can help improve construction schedules by demanding the use of more US made products. Specifying more American products leads to shorter transit times getting materials to job sites and better control over supply chains.

More US manufacturers are stepping up their design game with better product options. In recent years, the trend has been leaning toward European designs and US manufacturers have noticed. Often designers gravitate to European trends. Maybe it’s from deep roots in historic and iconic designs, maybe they visited design week in Milan in recent years, or maybe it’s the lure of hygge lifestyle that highlights a feeling of contentment. Whatever the case, many designers find European designs appealing, especially Scandinavian designs. Common characteristics of Scandinavian designs tend to be soft natural earth tones, subtle curved lines, light tone woods, minimal and clean. No hard edges, not overly lavish, it’s simple, minimal, and functional.

Will the design industry ever embrace influencer culture?

A burning, of-the-moment question that must be answered: Should Kim Kardashian start an Instagram account dedicated to interior design? I ask because I recently received an email from a home insurance policy comparison site that, as a marketing stunt, had crunched the numbers and determined that if Ms. Kardashian were to set up a homefluencer account, it could net her $14.5 million a year in partnership deals. According to the same site, the rapper Drake is apparently missing out on $5 million annually by not posting #wallpapergoals on his feed. If Gigi Hadid were to get serious with shiplap, she could rake in $40,000 a post.

If your reaction to the above examples is to scoff, you’re not entirely alone. But it’s worth pausing to wonder why. Over the past decade, the fashion and beauty industries have tightly embraced the influencer marketing model in all its forms, while home has lagged behind. Even the most rarefied luxury brands regularly pay teenagers on TikTok thousands of dollars to hawk their wares, and we wouldn’t blink an eye if Drake signed a deal with Louis Vuitton. Why not with Scalamandré?

To be fair, change is in the wind. In recent years, retail home brands have increasingly embraced influencer marketing as a way to reach home-obsessed consumers. All of the big players, from Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams to CB2, work with influencers, and just last week West Elm announced a big influencer program. Meanwhile, the home influencer mediasphere is starting to mint superstars—Shea and Syd McGee, who got their start on Instagram, have found mainstream success on Netflix and just sold a stake of their company to private equity.

Third Of Remote Workers Would Quit Before Returning To Office

A new survey suggests that a significant portion of remote workers today would in effect call their employer’s bluff if asked to return to pre-pandemic office life.

Released earlier this month, the survey by S&P 500 staffing firm Robert Half found that a full third of employees currently working from home would rather look for a new job than work full time in an office again.

Numerous tricky workplace policies and cultural shifts would need to take place before a significant portion of the workforce returned to some kind of full-time or hybrid office scenario, including increased feelings of safety around the vaccine and Covid-19 and newly enshrined and equitable remote work rules for employees.

As reported in HR Dive, the survey, which garnered results from 1,000 workers, found significant splits within the workforce, suggesting challenges ahead for corporate HR departments. Of the 1,000 working-age adults asked about their preferences, 28% were worried a fully remote scenario would weaken relationships with colleagues, and 26% said they felt less productive at home.

The third who feel comfortable bucking employer demands may have more marketable or in-demand skills, or may also be more senior; previous surveys suggested older workers were more comfortable with remote work.

The authors suggested companies try to bring remote workers back into the office with new policies, such as more flexible hours, relaxed dress codes, and most importantly, more support for childcare, a leading issue that drove workers, especially women, away from the workforce in 2020.

Legal Tenants Lead in the Return to Office

As vaccinations become more widespread, executives are beginning to target a return to office later this year.

But some professions are moving faster than others. According to Kastle’s Back to Work Barometer, which tracks the return to office in ten major cities, the occupancy rates for law firms are 10 percentage points higher than the average.

“In talking with our law firm clients, we are hearing many factors that have made remote work more challenging for this sector, including paper-heavy office systems and generally being slower to adopt new technologies,” Kastle CEO Haniel Lynn said in a prepared statement. “In looking at a return to the office, these and other workplace or cultural factors could also come into play for greater in person activity.”

Through its Kastle Back to Work Barometer, the company has been tracking the anonymized activity of 341,000 unique office credential holders in major cities. Of those credential holders, 31,582 are in the legal industry.

“For many of our members, some firms never closed at the beginning of the pandemic,” Association of Legal Administrators Executive Director April Campbell, JD said in a prepared statement. “Different local government guidance on what workers were deemed essential meant that in some cities that sometimes included law firms. There have also been concerns about the ability to onboard new employees and conduct new associate training remotely, so we’re seeing law firms in the office at higher rates.”

However, not all law firms plan to go back to business as usual. Last year, Jeff Schneider, a managing partner at Miami-based law firm Levine Kellogg Lehman Schneider + Grossman, told GlobeSt.com that the firm was considering shrinking its space.

“The biggest expenses for every law firm are space, personnel and insurance,” Schneider says. “Now we have an opportunity to cut one of them by a lot. Even if it’s not a 50% [reduction in office costs], but a 20%, 30% or 40% savings, that’s a massive cut. In addition to that, you end up with a much happier workforce.”

Space for the People, by the People

The complex relationship between the built environment and human movement has been a key experiential factor for thousands of years. By merely understanding how one moves through an environment, we are given insight into what, how, and why that specific space is used.

In the 21st century, the relationship between space and functionality can be accurately observed and measured to influence current and future workspace design. Recent research indicates that when it comes to design, the user has power—because successful spaces are made for the people who use them.

The Research Process The democratic way to design is by the user and for the user—not alienating people for the sake of a creative venture. Although, it is painstaking and quite physically impossible at times to involve and attend to tens and hundreds of users’ necessities for a space. By involving people in the process, their engagement will lead to the optimization of the space—and will make them feel responsible for its success.

In workplace design, user-directed spaces result in increased productivity. Analyzing user data in a workplace to understand patterns and trends can be an indirect way of involving the people in the process of space design. An example of this comes from a global tech organization—which we will refer to as GTO, as the actual name is not being disclosed for privacy reasons—that employed user sensor data to optimize space utilization and design.

Haworth conducted a year-long analytics study of over 3,000 individual workspaces and observational workshops. The goal of the study was to understand how to sustain the relevance of space, how to increase space utilization efficiency, and how to engage with user feedback about the space.

The Rise of the Destination-worthy, Hospitality-influenced Workplace

Cooper Carry’s Brian Parker shares how the post-pandemic office can find inspiration in hospitality design to become a “destination with intention” that not only draws workers back, but also encourages them to stay together to get work done.

After more than a year of working remotely, how do companies get employees to return to working in the office in a post-COVID world?

That’s the million-dollar question employers are continuing to wrestle — and with the coronavirus vaccine rollout now fully underway, new ideas continue to emerge about how to entice people back.

Yes, entice. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, more than half of employees said they would prefer to keep working from home even after the COVID crisis subsides, whether they are vaccinated or not. At the same time, company leaders need employees back in the office to boost morale and collaboration as much as to support management and mentorship. And while hybrid models may offer compromise and balance for some, the logistical challenges of scheduling meetings, allocating desks and implementing new policies could do more harm than good if not executed well.

Simply put, when health concerns subside, workplaces need to be intentionally designed in ways that make coming to the office more appealing than working from home. Enter the destination-worthy, hospitality-influenced office.

Consider this: the layouts and amenities of the best hotels and resorts are designed for optimal convenience, comfort and fun to keep people on property and capture more of guests’ dollars. Perhaps by leveraging the same strategies for the workplace, companies can capture a greater share of their employees’ ideas and creativity while also boosting company culture.

Doctors' Embrace Of Telemedicine Could Shape The Future Of Medical Offices

For more than a year, public and private health insurance providers have been reimbursing doctors for telemedicine visits, a pandemic-fueled tectonic shift in the U.S. healthcare system that has doctors reimagining how they will practice medicine in the future.

If those reimbursement policies — brought on by the federal national emergency, which President Joe Biden extended indefinitely last month — are extended or adopted long-term, they could drastically reduce doctors’ need for a physical office and have significant ramifications for the owners of medical office properties.

“Reimbursement has been a huge issue [for telemedicine], and that got resolved because of Covid,” said Dr. Payel Gupta, a New York City allergist who founded the telemedicine company Cleared. “That's going to be what's making the biggest difference and what is allowing for change.”

Gupta launched her new digital health platform in November, and as it grows it has led her to evaluate how much time she will spend in her Manhattan office going forward if the reimbursement trends brought on by the coronavirus pandemic remain beyond the health crisis.

On March 6, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a declaration that Medicare and Medicaid will cover televisits amid the health emergency to allow Americans to visit their doctors without leaving their homes. The measure, which has set a precedent for many private insurers as well, has opened the floodgates for a technological revolution in the healthcare field as virtual care caught on en masse.

For New York City, this means that many of the 33,910 doctors licensed throughout the five boroughs have begun to care for their patients, at least in part, virtually.

The Office as an Ecosystem - NeoCon Virtual Event Recap

It is only fitting that theMart’s spring NeoCon programming kicked off with the theme: A Return to Togetherness: Designing the Next Workplace. This was not only most relevant to where we all are in the current affairs, but also as Work Design Magazine launches the second iteration of The 2021 Next Work Environment Competition.

Here is our recap of the first presentation, The Office as an Ecosystem, presented by Gemma Riberti, Head of Lifestyle & Interiors, WGSN.

In a short amount of time, Gemma presented a finely tuned overview of how the office can be redefined as we move forward. The chat box was bubbling with over 60 questions and comments as she moved through her talk. WDM wanted to follow up with some of the most interesting questions as we caught up with her post-event.

'The Fluffy Jobs Are Gone': Recovering Coworking Firms Learn To Do More With Less

Flex office space has always been correlated with fluctuations in the wider commercial real estate market and office demand. But while the industry took a significant hit last spring, with more than 200 locations closing in 2020 per Upsuite, and once high-flying WeWork, now the subject of a special purpose acquisition company deal, has been reduced to a fraction of its former self, many industry observers see potential in flex space as corporations seek a new normal with hybrid schedules, remote work and potentially reduced real estate footprints.

But a central question for the industry is whether or not new demand will fuel new hiring. Liz Burow, a workplace consultant and former WeWork design director, doesn’t think this new enterprise demand necessarily translates into a large expansion of the flex office industry workforce. Like much of corporate America, the coronavirus pandemic has taught firms to do more with less.

“I am not sure if there will be a lot of hires within the flex space industry,” she said. “I think all the fluffy jobs are done or gone; all those people went on to other careers. Companies realize they can do a lot with a lean team, or have consultants and vendors handle design or operations.”

Early research suggests there is an appetite for more flexible office options. A report by sector specialist consultant Workthere found 79% of such spaces turning a profit, painting a much brighter portrait than early lockdowns suggested. Last December, CBRE concluded that the sector had “held its own” amid the pandemic. Growth in flex office has slowed to 7% year-over-year in the second half of 2020, well below 41% during the same time in 2019 but much better than the worst-case scenarios some feared. At the close of 2020, CBRE found that 82% of major companies anticipated using flex space going forward.

Why landlords are hunting for flexible-space partners

Amid empty office spaces and a hybrid future, landlords are exploring partnerships with flex operators

Office landlords saddled with empty space as a result of the coronavirus pandemic believe they’ve landed on a way to help fill it back up: teaming up with flexible space operators.

The global office leasing sector has faced severe strain over the last 12 months after companies were abruptly forced to experiment with homeworking. Flexible space operators had a particularly difficult time.

But as workers return to the office, flex space is being buoyed by businesses deploying less capital into real estate and employees who have come to expect more choice over how and where they work.

“The issue is that office landlords want more flex space in their portfolio, but the operators aren’t willing to take on new leases,” says Ben Munn, managing director of flex space at JLL.

So instead, management agreements — whereby flexible space operators share revenues with landlords — could become far more typical. It’s still early days, but this has the potential to rapidly increase the amount of flexible space in the market, a sharp change of fortunes for a sector whose future was deeply uncertain only months ago.

Flex for the future

Right now, most offices remain largely traditional. At around 6.9% of total office stock, central London has the highest concentration of flex space globally, ahead of other mature flex markets like New York City (4.3%), San Francisco (4.7%), Amsterdam (6.3%) and Paris (3.5%).

But expectations are for flexible office space to expand rapidly over the next decade. JLL predicts 30 percent of office space to be flexible in some form by 2030.

“The shift to management agreements means the sector can grow quickly with the capital requirements spread across a greater set of partners,” Munn says. “Management agreements can also align landlords and operator incentives, creating a mutually-beneficial partnership for all parties.”

Tech Dominated 2020 Office Leasing Despite Losing Market Share

Nationally, tech held onto its status as the most active industry in office leasing last year despite the sheer drop in activity, making it the ninth consecutive year of tech dominance, according to a report from CBRE. With major companies announcing reopening plans, 2021 could be a continuation of tech’s market command.

Although tech held a similar top spot in the overall San Francisco Bay Area’s office market, the region slipped from having the most tech office leasing in the country last year — a title achieved by Seattle that had 14 of the largest 100 tech leases, with a total of 3.4M SF of office leased to tech companies in that market. Meanwhile, the Bay Area had seven of the top 100 largest leases, with 862K SF leased.

However, last year could be an outlier, according to CBRE Tech Insights Center Executive Director Colin Yasukochi, who said it is quite likely that the S.F. Bay Area will once again lead the nation in tech office leasing in 2021.

“By the time we finish out 2021, many of these Bay Area firms would have signed new or renewal leases this year that would get them back to the No. 1 spot,” Yasukochi said. "I think [2020] is just kind of an anomaly in terms of having companies up in Seattle expanding because they needed to, as their business was expanding quite a lot. In the Bay Area, you had most companies pulling back on leasing activity.”

The boom in e-commerce particularly spurred a busy 2020 for Seattle-based tech giant Amazon.

While tech office leasing in Seattle isn’t expected to drop significantly, Yasukochi said that the Bay Area should have a much more active year once companies resume leasing decisions and move to repopulate offices.

Flex Office Companies Have Bought Into The Suburban Renaissance — But Will Tenants Join Them?

Flexible office operators are big believers that over the next five years, growth in suburban hubs will be the biggest change in their sector. It remains to be seen, however, if tenants will follow them to the burbs.

A new report from Workthere, the flexible office consultancy of Savills, found that 17% of the 100 global operators it surveyed said that a growth in suburban hubs would be the biggest change in the sector over the next five years. In North America the proportion who cited this as the biggest change was 24%, in the UK, 16%. 

The other big changes predicted were a growth in management agreements, cited globally by 17% of respondents; the ability to book space online through a platform, cited by 16%; and the repurposing of retail assets into flexible offices, cited by 13%. 

“The operators have definitely bought into the opportunity, the big question is to what extent it will happen,” Workthere Global head Cal Lee said. 

For operators, the appeal of growing in the suburbs is clear, Lee said. It diversifies portfolios away from the current concentration in city centres, and the growing willingness of landlords to enter into management agreements rather than leases means they can access buildings in these markets without taking on long-term liabilities. 

Tenants are telling them that they want to give their workers greater choice to work near home in more suburban locations, Lee said — the much vaunted hub-and-spoke model. But the sector is still in that experimental period where there is uncertainty about the extent to which words are being matched with actions. A Bisnow survey of 1,200 commercial real estate professionals found only 17.4% are interested in working from a suburban outpost, while 56.2% of respondents said they would prefer to go into a central hub office.

Global flex office operator IWG recently produced its own research that said that in a survey of 501 executives from FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies, 49% said they were considering setting up offices nearer to where staff live, and three times more said they would be adopting a hub-and-spoke model than said they would be returning to the norm of five-days-a-week in a central office. 

What’s next for NYCxDesign?

The past year has been a time of change for everyone, and NYCxDesign, the organization that runs New York’s design week, is no exception. A quick rundown of what has been a tumultuous 12 months: the organization was forced to postpone its events and pivot to virtual format; it left an administration agreement with Sandow to become an independent nonprofit for the first time; it launched a podcast and prepped a print magazine; and, as if that wasn’t enough, last month, it appointed a new executive director, arts administration veteran Elissa Black.

Not so long ago, NYCxDesign was making headlines for that Sandow partnership, which was slated to consolidate the organization’s weekslong flurry of events (previously managed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation) under the media company’s operational purview starting with the 2020 edition. That short partnership is over, though Sandow will continue to support the organization as a media partner. “It was decided that NYCxDesign would be best at home as an independent nonprofit,” says program director Valerie Hoffman.

After a period of dramatic transition, NYCxDesign is looking ahead to its next chapter. Business of Home chatted with Black and Hoffman to hear what’s on the horizon.

While the residential design industry has experienced a pandemic-fueled surge, the hospitality and commercial side of design has been gutted by COVID. Add to that the fact that New York was hard hit across the board (even with the renewed focus on home, the suburban exodus has somewhat tamped down business for Manhattan designers). One of NYCxDesign’s key priorities, says Black, is to rebuild.

“I want this organization there at the forefront as we’re growing back equitable opportunity in the city,” says Black. The newly minted nonprofit has already made some moves there, with the formation of Design Corps, a volunteer squad of 60 designers who give pro bono design advice to restaurants seeking to reopen safely. A new program, ImpactXDesign, also looks to help heal a wounded city, with two $10,000 grants awarded to designers to create public spaces in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. The program, sponsored by Caesarstone, looks to create projects that foster “ideal places for congregation”—surely a need in the post-social-distancing era.

Milliken’s London showroom becomes first in the UK to receive Well Certification

Flooring designer and manufacturer Milliken announced that it has been awarded WELL Certification at the Platinum level for its Clerkenwell Showroom by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). The prestigious distinction was awarded through IWBI’s WELL v2 pilot, the next version of the WELL Building Standard. WELL is the premier building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and wellness through the buildings where we live, work and play.

Milliken’s three storey showroom is a multi-functional space used as a gallery for showcasing flooring collections, sample storage and distribution, client meetings, hospitality and events, meeting space and as a flexible work and well-being hub for Milliken employees.

Arcadia: Find your happy space with TOOaPICNIC

Arcadia captures the feeling of being outdoors with TOOaPICNIC, a collection of benches, two-seat booths and individual private lounge seating inspired by the classic picnic table.

As the name would suggest, TOOaPICNIC conjures warm feelings and a playful sense of whimsy with its imaginative design. Licensed from the Dutch label TOOtheZOO, the collection’s defining characteristic is an angled wood frame that extends outward from the center of each model at a 45-degree angle, creating an A-frame-like appearance that’s both minimalistic and dramatic.

This duality is particularly evident on two-seat models, where the legs extend to support a communal table between the two seats. Center wood support beams are also intentionally left exposed, further adding to the collection’s casual, youthful appeal and contributing to the overall pluckiness of the design.

The full collection includes light-scale two-seat bench booths available with or without backrests, two-seat lounge booths and single lounge models, both offered with varying back and side panel options to achieve different levels of privacy. Two-seat and three-seat open benches round-out the series and feature the same wood leg design as their booth and single lounge counterparts for continuity throughout spaces.

Configuration capabilities include back-to-back compositions within open plan spaces, linear arrangements to create ancillary seating along walls or in corridors, as well as paired, opposing or individual placement in any number of environments. Legs and frame are offered in solid white oak in all standard and custom finishes, while table top surface options include white oak veneer or laminate, with an exposed plywood edge. A variety of power/data options, including a table-mount option, allow users to stay charged and connected.

“Sometimes the simplest precedents can create the most meaningful expressions,” says Tammie Alciatore, Arcadia Director of Marketing. "The familiarity and fond memories associated with picnicking make for a welcoming solution that brings people together naturally.”

Móz Designs Introduces 11 New Earth-toned Colorways

Móz Designs, introduces 11 new earth-toned Blendz Patina colorways that bring the look of naturally timeworn textures to commercial spaces using sleek, lightweight metal materials. Available in rusted copper hues, deep forest greens, and moody grays, the colors appear antique while maintaining a smooth, easy-to-clean finish. Crafted with solid core aluminum, the new colorways are made to withstand disinfectants and high-traffic areas as we prepare to reenter shared spaces. Following the industry’s movement toward holistic design, Blendz Patina’s 100% recyclable panels pair beautifully with natural materials like wood, steel, and concrete. Specifiable as space dividers, walls, columns, and exterior applications, the new Blendz Patina colorways offer designers more options to create safe yet design-forward environments.

“Designers are already imagining communal spaces for the next normal, so they’re looking for materials that are safe while evoking a sense of comfort—that’s where we come in,” says Tripp Sandford, co-founder of Móz Designs. “The new Blendz colors merge thoughtful design and natural textures with the strength and durability Móz is known for.”

Customizable to fit any brand identity or design aesthetic, Móz transposes high-resolution graphics with the grains of metal for a textured, multi-layered effect. Images are printed on solid core or perforated metal, and colors and grains can be added to each sheet for a unique dimensional look.

Designed with aluminum, one of the most sustainable materials in the world, and produced in their solar-powered Oakland factory, Móz puts an active effort into reducing their carbon footprint throughout the entire design process.

Thinking Man's Chair by Jasper Morrison

Thinking Man’s Chair is a minimal lounge chair created by London-based designer Jasper Morrison for Cappellini, relaunched in a limited edition of 25 pieces with a hot-dip zinc-galvanized finish for twentytwentyone exclusively. Twentytwentyone is celebrating 25 years with the release of a series of unique products and limited edition pieces.

Now in its namesake year, twentytwentyone’s anniversary celebrates with Jasper Morrison, one of their first collaborators back in 1996. Returning to the conversation initiated many years ago, the consideration of producing the Thinking Man’s Chair in zinc-galvanized metal was back on the table.

As described by Tony Cunningham of twentytwentyone, “The Thinking Man’s Chair represents the enduring value of Jasper Morrison’s work. Whilst apparently simple and spare, it is in fact complex in design, and difficult to make. The now iconic profile involves 22 component parts fusing flat and round elements of differing radii. It represents quiet modernism, with individual flair.”

De Vorm Introduces Soft Distancing for Added Safety in the Office

With the world slowly inching towards some sense of normality, heading back to the office comes to mind. Unless you were an essential worker, you were most likely sent to work at home indefinitely at the start of the pandemic. As more people get vaccinated, companies are opening up and trying to navigate a new world as some amount of social distancing may be around for awhile. That means open office plans are going to have to be reimagined to ensure everyone’s health and safety remain at the forefront. Instead of starting from scratch, brands like De Vorm are developing thoughtful solutions for offices, schools and restaurants that will bring people back together while keeping them safe through Soft Distancing.

With the world slowly inching towards some sense of normality, heading back to the office comes to mind. Unless you were an essential worker, you were most likely sent to work at home indefinitely at the start of the pandemic. As more people get vaccinated, companies are opening up and trying to navigate a new world as some amount of social distancing may be around for awhile. That means open office plans are going to have to be reimagined to ensure everyone’s health and safety remain at the forefront. Instead of starting from scratch, brands like De Vorm are developing thoughtful solutions for offices, schools and restaurants that will bring people back together while keeping them safe through Soft Distancing.

Actiu’s self-regulating system seeks balance by connecting people with the work environment

Gaia by Actiu is a pioneering and disruptive IoT platform that incorporates sensors into the work environment to gather data on how it is used and the conditions of the environment, positively impacting user well-being, as well as the organization’s results.

As well as optimising the use of space and promoting energy efficiency by integrating them into environmental control systems, which, in turn, leads to a reduction in costs. Gaia enables looking after the users working in these spaces, ensuring their comfort at all times and thereby safeguarding their health. This aspect also strengthens engagement and facilitates talent attraction.

Gaia therefore makes it possible to make spaces more profitable, boost energy savings and safeguard worker well-being, connecting them with a safe and high-performing work environment, having been awarded the Best Innovative Solution at the City Awards as part of the international architecture and city 2020 Madrid Open House festival.

To create Gaia, Actiu turned to a range of technology experts in AI, IoT, analytics, Big Data and user experience as well as in corporate well-being and health. Actiu is currently rolling out this technology in its own facilities and to develop the first projects Actiu is collaborating with several Spanish companies, leaders in their respective industries. Gaia will be available internationally from June.

A smart analytical environment

By simply installing sensors in any piece of furniture, Gaia facilitates collecting data and transmitting it to the cloud to be processed by a series of algorithms that provide extensive knowledge on how the spaces are used, with a view to correctly managing the work environment, both in the offices themselves and in third-party spaces where remote work is carried out, as well as other industries such as the education industry, among others. Furthermore, Gaia uses its own communication infrastructure, guaranteeing anonymity as well as ensuring maximum security in data processing.

The platform improves people’s safety by providing information to guarantee social distancing measures and ensuring density in open areas, as well as meeting rooms, while monitoring parameters such as space occupancy, temperature, humidity, light, sound, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and airborne particles.

Just as the Gaia hypothesis itself suggests that the presence of life on Earth fosters conditions suitable to maintain the biosphere, Gaia by Actiu behaves as a self-regulating system that seeks balance by connecting people with the environment.

Space Matrix [β] Lab Offices – Gurugram

Space Matrix's [β] Lab offers their team a dedicated space to test creativity, imagination and design, an experimentation center to further the ideas of the Gurgaon-based architecture firm.

Space Matrix created an all-encompassing testing facility with the [β] Lab, a space for their team to play out their designs in real-time in Gurugram, India.

Those driving down Gurgaon’s Golf Course Road might slow down at seeing a gorgeous piazza-like forecourt of an eye-catching entrance, done up with greenery, artefacts and featuring a massive rustic double height door. If you’re headed to the Space Matrix [β] Lab (Beta Lab), you’ll know you’ve come to the right place.

[β] Lab — The Genesis
[β] Lab is not just a design studio or a workspace — it is an amalgamation of various work environments that function as a testing ground, both for us and our clients. One might say it’s a real-time workshop that brings together the art and science of design, essentially in permanent beta mode.

Over the last few years, work has steadily become a lot more dynamic, with employee needs and workplace nuances changing every day. Under the circumstances, we saw the need for a space where clients would be able to come and actually test out workplace solutions themselves before making a strategic workplace decision. .

To cater to this need, we started creating hyper-realistic mock-ups for all our projects 5 years ago. Now, we have decided to take it one step ahead and actually create a space where our clients would be able to experience various design solutions before committing to one or multiple choices.

Sander Lak brings his intuitive approach to colour to new Maharam collaboration

Maharam presents a new collection of upholstery fabrics in collaboration with New York designer Sander Lak. Lak set up Sies Marjan six years ago; last June, the label was shuttered, another casualty of the pandemic, but before its untimely demise, it had established a reputation for impeccable tailoring, a colour-focused approach and a feel-good point of view. And it went out on a creative high.

For his final A/W20 collection, Lak, a former design director at Dries Van Noten, took an esoteric deep dive into experimental sustainable practices, sponsoring and creating a capsule collection for the AMO/Rem Koolhaas’ exhibition, ‘Countryside, The Future’, which opened in February last year at the Guggenheim. The collection explored ideas of sustainability and eco-responsibility as Lak experimented with innovative material techniques and fabrications. These included a collaboration with Cornell University on an eco-printing technique where plants and flowers were hammered into silk to create prints, and transforming sustainable wool upholstery, developed from sheep sheddings by Dutch textile artist Claudy Jongstra, into two sleeveless overcoats and a duffle bag.

The Jongstra collaboration introduced Lak to Maharam. Jongstra’s Drenthe Heath fabric, named for the indigenous Drenthe Heath sheep that she rears in northern Netherlands, and exclusive to Maharam, was custom-dyed using walnut husks, onion skins, indigo and madder to create a deep, rich kelp colour for the Sies Marjan collection. The textile was also incorporated into a limited run of Maharam pillows as part of a Sies Marjan x AMO capsule line, sold at the Guggenheim store.

Maharam and Sander Lak: the collaboration

This month, Lak and Maharam reveal a new joint effort – the development of three wool fabrics that join Maharam’s wool initiative, launched at the end of February 2021. Responding to growing interest in renewable natural fabrics for furniture upholstery, while taking a fresh look at classic textiles, the offerings include material made using post-consumer recycled wool, and wool that has been spun, woven and pressed at a single location to reduce the environmental impact of textile transport.

Lak has created a pair of woven felts – Gemma (with a solid and saturated finish) and its mélange sibling Gemma Multi (an intricate duotone that’s also reversible) – along with Terra, a chunky basket-weave wool that nods to his fashion background with its cable knit-like blooms. They reflect extensive colour experimentation, alongside the material depth and nuances in wool. Offering a combined palette of 150 colours, the textiles bring a fresh perspective to what upholstery can be. 

‘What was great about this project was that I had this incredible freedom,’ says Lak, who was born in Brunei, and grew up between Malaysia, Gabon, Scotland and the Netherlands. ‘When I’m working on a collection, we normally work with maybe 12 colours, which is already a lot. From a fashion point of view, there are so many things you have to think about for fabrics.’ Designing interiors textiles was a new experience. ‘Instead of me considering where on the body this would go and how I would line it, I really just had to look at the fabric and decide what colour this fabric, this texture and these fibres would take best, without having to worry about skin tones, hair colour, shape or washability. Of course, we have to look at which colours will sell well and which are more editorial, but we needed so many colours that it was the first time I really felt I could let it all come out of me.’

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