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.
Karim Rashid may look fairly content in the above picture: shades lowered, wearing one of his signature all-white outfits. But in previous shots, he was holding forth a ceramic white coffee mug. And there was a problem. The mug was not his, and it was not well designed.
Abhorring design that is superfluous, Welsh industrial designer Ross Lovegrove is a true advocate of an esthetic that combines depth and thoughtfulness with emerging technologies and new materials. Dubbed “Captain Organic”, his human- and earth-centric works are inspired by the logic and beauty of nature and informed by a social and environmental consciousness, prominent examples being the Sony ngIf: ticker Walkman, Apple ngIf: ticker AAPL +9.11% ngIf: show_card end ngIf: ticker computers, the Liquid bench and table collection, KEF Muon loudspeaker, Narciso Rodriguez Essence perfume bottle, Zanotta Brazilia lounger and footstool, leather luggage for Louis Vuitton ngIf: ticker , Ty Nant water bottle, Luceplan Solar Bud garden lamp and Swarovski Crystal Aerospace concept solar car. He participated in the Atelier de Nîmes alongside Philippe Starck and Jean Nouvel, consulting for Cacharel, Louis Vuitton and Hermès, which he calls “a lovely time because I was the only one in Paris bridging the gap between luxury, ideas and art”, and his work has been exhibited in world-famous centers for art and design, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Design Museum in London.
Year by year, the Innovation by Design Awards have grown. This year's entries represented an astonishingly strong survey of innovation around the globe—more than 1,700 designs. In the eyes of our esteemed judges, the projects you'll find below (and in the slide show above) were the best of the best. There were only 15 winners anointed in the entire competition; we also crowned 231 finalists. Each of those projects represents what's best about design today: big ideas, meticulously thought-out details, and a clear viewpoint about how we live now—and how it could be better. We hope that you'll dig in and be inspired.
Interior designer Gary Wheeler is to join New York’s HDR—a multifaceted company providing engineering, architecture, environmental and construction services. Known for tactical approaches to workplace design, backed by research and strategic solutions, the former president of the American Society of Interior Designers will now act as the company’s global director in interior design and workplace strategy. Working with the architectural design and engineering groups, the practice hopes to expands its role with clients from the healthcare, science, education, corporate, and civic markets, according to HDR’s press release.
Educational institutions and professional organizations are placing more and more emphasis on the role collaboration plays in creating new ideas. They are looking for ways to nurture critical thinking and curiosity by providing environments for authentic, cross-disciplinary connections. This shift couldn’t come at a more prescient time. These types of interactions can lead to increased innovation and engagement – something our global society values more than ever. While heads-down work continues, the changing nature of learning and work has resulted in a shift toward frequent and spontaneous exchanges. Enter the innovation center: a multi-faceted, exploratory setting that supports these goals by allowing people to discover and ideate organically.
From makerspaces to academic incubators to innovation districts, these environments are specifically designed for invention and create the perfect zones for self-directed, project-driven, and multidisciplinary exploration.
Lee Coomber explains why blending design thinking and business strategy is such a successful combination.
There has never been a better time to be a designer. Leading brands - such as Nike - are moving designers into CEO roles. Consulting and financial companies are snapping up design firms. IBM has bought three design agencies this year alone.
More than a third of the top 25 funded start-ups are co-founded by designers. And the Design Management Institute found that, in the US up until 2014, design-led companies outperformed the S&P stock market index by 219% over the last 10 years. What’s created this shift to design?
Éminence grise Michele Caniato is the president of Material ConneXion and is responsible for many colossal decisions in the design industry. With locations all over the world, Material ConneXion maintains the world’s largest subscription-based materials library. The Architect’s Newspaper sat down with Caniato to discuss the behind-the-scenes operations of his career and the industry at large.
Product design at architecture firms is typically job-specific, with pieces like hardware, millwork, and furniture made to complement a particular project. Some firms, however, market those pieces as stand-alone wares, turning product design into its own revenue stream, which requires careful analysis of demand, production, and distribution.
In 1775, Thomas Jefferson was a busy man. As part of the Committee of Five men and at the tender age of 33, he had been charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence that was to be presented to Congress the following Summer. By all accounts, Jefferson was a self-contained and self-sufficient man and, like most great people, a mass of contradictions. Christopher Hitchens described him in 2005 as ‘a revolutionary who above all believed in order’. Hitchens also describes Jefferson as an early pioneer of what we now call wellness, reflecting that Jefferson believed – unlike Hitchens himself – that ‘a true philosopher ought to spend as much time in exercise and labour as he did with books and papers. He should emulate the balance and symmetry of nature. He should be careful about what he put into his system’. It is in light of this that we should not be surprised that Jefferson was the man who took time out from his world altering work to invent the swivel chair.
Recently, the furniture giant West Elm and the L.A.–based design studio Commune released a collection of furniture and accessories with a midcentury-inspired sensibility. But as some bloggers were quick to point out, the "midcentury-inspired" looked more like a midcentury rip-off. The ensuing debate has raised pertinent questions about design plagiarism: Where do you draw the line between paying homage to a design classic and copying it? How close is too close?
On August 6, the design gallerist Patrick Parrish published comparisons between the new items from West Elm alongside furniture classics by icons like George Nelson, Hans Wegner, and Charlotte Perriand on his blog; many of the new pieces are dead ringers for the older works. As Parrish—who is a design expert and possesses more knowledge about furniture than the average consumer—pointed out, the Commune Low Cushion Ottoman shares the same inverted pyramid legs as a Bruce Goff c. 1957 ottoman. The Commune Tufted Ottoman looks eerily like Danish designer Kaare Klint's c. 1933 ottoman. Parrish then made six more comparisons—and the likeness is uncanny in all of 'em. Mere coincidence?
Of all the influences from the past 100 years, the Bauhaus—the venerable art and design school founded in 1919—has had the most enduring impact on the world, from the modern products and furniture we buy, to the graphics we see, and the architecture we inhabit. Yet while scholars have pored over the school and deconstructed its teachings for decades, many untold stories still wait to be unearthed.
This month, the Harvard Art Museum is highlighting them, launching a digital archive of its immense collection of Bauhaus-related artworks, prototypes, documents, prints, drawings, and photographs. The archive is the legacy of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, who became a professor at Harvard in 1937 after the school closed in 1933 (the Nazis did not agree with its experimental teachings), bringing his knowledge and ephemera to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It’s hard to believe that developing splints — and producing them in the thousands for the U.S. Navy during World War II — would eventually lead to the creation of one of the most iconic midcentury-modern furniture pieces: the Eames molded plywood chair. But, this is a true story. That exploratory nature, along with a function-meets-form design sensibility, helped catapult the Eameses into becoming the first “it” couple of American modernism. As August 21 marks the day that both Charles and Ray Eames passed away, a decade apart, we reflect on 10 of the duo’s best-known product designs, from furniture and textile to a whimsical accessory and game.
When architecture and interior design firm AEI, were designing this school in Bogota, Colombia, they decided to introduce bright colors and fun furniture.
The walls of various areas of the school have a honeycomb pattern with slots designed for storing cushioned seats. When certain seats are removed, reading nooks appear, ideal for kids that want a quiet getaway.
By the numbers, WeWork’s dominance as a collaborative-workspace provider is hard to dispute. With a $16 billion valuation as of March, and more than 900 employees as of June, the company currently leases coworking spaces to 60,000 members at 110 sites in 30 cities across 12 countries. (It also has two WeLive locations, a residential take on the sharing experience.) This includes the 13 sites in seven cities that WeWork opened since the beginning of this month alone, which translate to 9,500 additional desks, each of which can be rented per month.
Aside from bringing in revenue, these hundreds of sites and thousands of desks also serve as one enormous test bed for WeWork’s 13-person product-research team to conduct massive studies in architectural planning, programming, and design. Kicking off this endeavor was the debut of the company’s flagship “beta floor,” the sixth floor of WeWork’s Times Square office, in New York, which hosted the company’s inaugural product roundtable last week.
Eero Saarinen, Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Thomas Heatherwick, Walter Gropius, Shigeru Ban, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry: If it seems like every architect of note has also designed a chair, it's because that's pretty much true. Why? In her new book Chairs by Architects (Thames & Hudson), art historian Agata Toromanoff says that chairs afford architects an opportunity to distill their techniques, innovations, and style into a new medium. Importantly, they also serve as a rite of passage.
In the world of design, one size does not fit all. To give designers the flexibility they need, we continue to explore new avenues of making customization easier and more accessible. When thinking of ways we could enable customers to personalize their products, our Coalesse Studio design team got to thinking about the various ways people express themselves. Everything a person wears says something about who they are: their clothing, their hairstyle, their jewelry, even what’s on their skin. Since tattoos are such a popular form of personal expression, our designers came up with the idea of “tattooing” the LessThanFive Chair.
An eclectic designer at HGA's downtown Minneapolis office imparts the virtues of bold office art and forward-thinking space planning. Awesome offices support positive mood and healthy lifestyles. Designing a place where people may spend the majority of their time is a very influential position to be in - so why not make happy places? Providing as much access to daylight as possible is a primary goal when I’m space planning, and if our clients haven’t specifically requested amenities from the get-go, early planning is a great time to start conversations about how community spaces, such as a work café, can uplift corporate culture.
The architects and designers who create inspirational workspaces are participants in a dynamic process of customization. Their mission is to be responsive to each client’s unique community and character, and to express those attributes in an environment that is unlike any other. Yet as tailored as these settings can be, they are rarely made of one-of-a-kind components.
Designers need tools to enliven the impersonal office and overcome the commonality of its prevailing furnishings. But how do these building blocks become more bespoke?
This is the new culture of Customization — a rising phenomenon today that empowers greater personal expression and creative participation in the demand for individualized products. Coalesse studies how customization has evolved in the greater design ecosystem, pushed both by a steady appetite for the value and heritage of crafted goods, and the democracy of newer technologies that engage consumers —and design professionals — deeper in the product-making equation than ever before.
Karen Wetmore, Lead Designer at PDR, talks about what’s trending with materials and colors in the workplace. With images and video from Chicago’s 2016 NeoCon, Karen shares her findings on the current direction of color in furnishing and workplace applications, including upholstery and metal finishing trends.
Today, good design has become a top priority for many leaders looking to boost productivity, retain employees, attract customers and keep their business competitive. But good design can also be good for business on a more practical level - a professional, well-conceived design can save an owner or developer thousands of dollars over the life of a project.
