Coalesse Design Studio in Munich, Germany
In 2008, the idea of auxiliary furniture was unknown. Though cubicles were on their way out, most office furniture makers still relied on desk systems of some kind. People still worked at their desks. Collaborative spaces existed — they were called meeting rooms at the time.
So when Coalesse was established a decade ago, it had beautiful products for a market that was still developing. Of course, in the years since Coalesse was founded, the market arrived for high-end furniture that could be used to create casual spaces that were more home than sterile office.
Coalesse still lives by its founding belief it can be internationally relevant by creating great, live-work spaces and partnering with world-class designers.
It seems like yesterday when the Steelcase Design Partnership was reworked into Coalesse, but it was 2005 when Steelcase began thinking about what to do with its constellation of high-end furniture brands it had acquired. Those brands — Brayton International, Metro Furniture and Vecta — were filled with great products, but as individual entities they were disjointed in the world of Steelcase. While successful and sought after by the architecture and design community, the SDP brands acted independently and didn't mesh. For the most part, they were autonomous units. For example, fabrics and finishes on a Vecta product didn't necessarily match with offerings on a Brayton piece, making it difficult for designers to create a consistent look. So executives began thinking about a new brand to encompass all of them. The idea that would become Coalesse was simply known as “Brand 3” in those days, said Lew Epstein, general manager.
“We were thinking in terms (of three tiers of furniture like) Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic,” he said. “It was a simple separation of brand and brand spaces. Brand 3 was going to be the upper echelon of what the SCS Design Partnership would become. Before, the Steelcase Design Partnership was a disparate set of brands — they all got along well, partnered well, but each was very separate. So we said let's put them all in a common brand and idea.”
The reference points for the Coalesse brand were spas, nature, progressive materials born out of new technologies and biophilia, to name just a few. Coalesse's creators were looking in the margins for evolving trends. The furniture was designed not only to be sold for use in offices, but also for home use to customers and what Steelcase called the “professional grade consumer level.” The thinking was Fortune 500 executives who worked in Steelcase furniture in the office would want the same quality and functionality at home.
Coalesse was officially launched by Steelcase at NeoCon 2008. Its showroom was in suite 1032, part of the former home of Steelcase after the parent company moved to the third floor.
It is unclear how much Coalesse furniture ends up in a home compared to how much is used in an office, but it definitely trends more more heavily toward the office. And that's where the market shift has helped Steelcase. Even if consumers didn't call for Coalesse, interior designers did, driven by customer demands for more comfortable, less clinical workplaces.
“All of these aspects lend themselves to a brand that wouldn't define itself simply as corporate,” Epstein said. “Home, public spaces of different types, a variety of different experiences — we didn't want to be restricted. We wanted to be a complement to other parts of the business. That remains true today.”
The relationship between Steelcase and Coalesse has evolved over the last decade. Epstein called it “an interesting reciprocal relationship.” Coalesse has become a division that can experiment. Though Steelcase leans heavily on its Workplace Futures group, Coalesse is able to take risks that its parent company simply can't.
“We can run with something in our own way, a way that is appropriate to us because it fits our own scale,” he said. “That risk might not be appropriate for a (brand) like Steelcase.”
A good example of this give and take can be found in two products: The LessThanFive carbon fiber chair designed by Coalesse and the new Silq task chair by Steelcase. Coalesse took a chance on LessThanFive by using carbon fiber and creating a wildly different (and wildly expensive) side chair. The learning that came from LessThanFive helped the Steelcase designers of the Silq chair understand what was possible from a material like carbon fiber.
The Coalesse Design group is led by John Hamilton and is based in Steelcase's Learning and Innovation Center (LINC) in Munich, Germany. That meshes with the brand's and design group's determination to work on a global platform from which to explore the future of work and engage with other world-class designers.
Hamilton said Coalesse has excelled in what he calls “category creation.” Back to the LessThanFive chair for a moment. He said the project began with a simple curiosity about carbon fiber, not because they wanted to do a side chair. Through this curiosity, they learned how to create the lightest chair that could be stacked and shipped in a different way.
“It is interesting and a nice role for Coalesse,” he said. “I think we are the tip of the spear (for Steelcase), watching things that are emerging and trying things that on a larger scale would be too risky.”
Coalesse has made some groundbreaking products over the years by working with world class designers. The brand didn't always opt for the flashiest name, instead it has worked with excellent international designers who are well known, but more importantly, well-respected for their work. They include the likes of Arik Levy, Toan Nguyen, Jean-Marie Massaud, Brian Kane and Stephan Copeland, to name a few.
Epstein and Hamilton want to push Coalesse forward even further. Though it is a unique brand, it still shares some sensibilities with the Steelcase mother ship. One is its belief in research to drive solutions. Epstein said the brand and its designers are intrigued by the definition of comfort that goes well beyond traditional thoughts about it. Included in that is well-being and biophilia.
“I'm talking about social, emotional and cognitive comfort,” he said. “We not an object-focused company. It's about settings. When you go into a space, you are going to scan the room for where the best place might be to meet with a colleague. Then you think: 'Is this a formal meeting? Is it casual? Those are assessments of social comfort. There is also the idea of cognitive comfort when you are working alone. By understanding the problem, you can begin to solve for the whole setting. Our job is to nail that setting. To do that, we need to understand what is innately human.”