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.
Madan Bhayana, Chairman of Inscape Corporation Ltd., has announced the following organizational changes, effective immediately. After an in-depth business review, the Inscape Board has created two operating business units:
A manufacturer of lift mechanisms for hospital beds and adjustable workstations is planning a $33 million expansion that would add 413 jobs in Louisville.
The company, LINAK U.S., which is headquartered in Denmark, unveiled plans to expand its operations at 2200 Stanley Gault Parkway in Louisville, KY, spending $14 million each on a building addition and new equipment. LINAK also estimated $1.4 million in startup costs and more than $3 million in property costs. The company's current 60,000-square-foot office and manufacturing facility is located in the Eastpoint Business Center near Anchorage.
For nearly two decades, the leadership team of Steelcase, the office furniture manufacturer, was located on one of the top floors of the global corporate headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, overlooking the prairie surrounding its campus. In 2014, after Jim Keane was promoted from COO to CEO, he decided to move the leadership team across campus to what the company calls the Learning and Innovation Center, the main crossroads through which employees frequently pass. The new office space on the ground floor is now buzzing with interactions between leaders, employee teams and customers throughout the day.
"I loved my old office and old space. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it," says Keane, "[But] the way my team [now] flanks the core aisle, the majority of office activity funnels down that aisle, and we get to witness it all. I’m not going to learn anything if I just keep working with something that is very comfortable for me."
The last 10 years have brought us to the verge of the fourth Industrial Revolution. The first was machine-driven, the second brought production lines, the third — which some are still catching up to — is the digital revolution, and now we build on the digital, where boundaries between the physical and digital merge, leading to new realities like mass-customization. We are entering the ‘age of exponential growth,’ and it’s all driven by technology.
In the fourth Industrial Revolution, all manufacturers will be run more like social media, where the user is in charge. Manufacturers will give their clients the tools to run their facilities and price their products. Mass customization will be the norm. Offshoring for lower labour costs and materials will be a thing of the past — all thanks to technology, which is improving so quickly, its only downside is that it feels impossible to keep up with.
Herman Miller’s Bob Wood talks about the ingenious solution for this factory, while long-time employees of the company recount the features of the building and its link with the outdoors.
It used to be that if you went to IIDEX, the big office interior design show, you saw office interiors. Herman Miller, Steelcase, Teknion, all the big guns would be out with their latest. Teknion, which is based in Toronto, would take up a couple of thousand square feet. It is nice stuff, but it seems that where the trend among those of us who work at home is to have an office, it seems that everyone who is at the office is going to look like they are working from home on the dining room table.
Knoll, Inc. and DatesWeiser Furniture Corporation today announced that Knoll, Inc. has acquired the Buffalo-based designer and manufacturer of contemporary wood conference and meeting room furniture through an acquisition of the DatesWeiser business.
Global design manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc. is joining forces with Sustainable Brands®, BASF, General Motors, and Green Standards to support The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, a Detroit-based nonprofit whose mission is to use urban agriculture as a platform to promote education, sustainability, and community and to uplift and empower urban neighborhoods. MUFI is debuting America’s first sustainable urban agrihood, an alternative neighborhood growth model in Detroit’s lower North End that positions agriculture as the centerpiece of a mixed-use urban development.
To serve as the urban agrihood’s central activity hub, the partners will restore a three-story long-vacant building across from MUFI’s urban garden into a Community Resource Center (CRC) and transform adjacent vacant land into a healthy food café. The 3,200 square-foot, box-shaped CRC will offer educational programs, event and meeting space, and serve as the organization’s new operational headquarters. It will also house two commercial kitchens on the first floor that will service the café and allow for future production and packaging of valued goods. The project is scheduled to be unveiled as part of Sustainable Brands ‘17 Detroit conference, held at the Cobo Center May 22-25.
We sat down with Geoff Miller, president of Grand Rapids Chair Company, to find out what makes this company so great!
Coalesse, a division of Steelcase, creates office furnishings with the ultimate goal of maximizing collaboration in the workplace.
Office furniture manufacturer Steelcase is now a distributor for Blu Dot, a Minneapolis-based producer of modern home furnishings, lighting and accessories.
In its announcement of the distribution relationship, Steelcase said the move is part of the company's ongoing "commitment to deliver enhanced value and convenience to its customers and dealers."
Steelcase will sell Blu Dot furniture through its distribution network. The core of Steelcase business is to help organizations create great work experiences through understanding worker behavior and creating places to help people think better, feel better and be healthier. Working with Blu Dot expands the company’s breadth in an important and growing category, adding another layer to its ability to service customer needs.
Founded in 1997, Blu Dot offers a wide array of modern home furnishings and accessories including rugs and lighting.
“In the past few years, we have experienced enormous growth in the office segment as companies use our wide collection to personalize their spaces," said John Christakos, Blu Dot CEO. "With Steelcase, we’re able to reach its entire dealer network with convenient tools, ordering platforms and logistics that will make specifying Blu Dot even easier. We couldn’t be more excited about this new relationship.”
Steelcase will make the full Blu Dot product line available through the Steelcase Dealer Network. Dealers will order from Blu Dot and products will ship with Steelcase orders. The process will be managed through the Steelcase order entry and transportation network. Steelcase dealers can begin to order Blu Dot products immediately.
Herman Miller, America's most famous design brand, opened its only retail store in North America this week, and there's plenty to ogle within the 6,000-square-foot space. Filled with furniture, lighting, and accessories—manufactured not only by Herman Miller but also by independent designers and sourced from the Chicago auction house Wright—the store is designed to embody the Herman Miller lifestyle.
"It's important that we don't envision us as just a furniture store, but that for the consumer, can we help you imagine a modern way to live?" Herman Miller's executive creative director Ben Watson told Co.Design earlier this year. Organized into room vignettes—think fully furnished living rooms, dining rooms, kids rooms, and more—the store achieves just that.
Everywhere we look, video is spreading like wild fire. Facebook’s vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa predicts news feed will be all video in just five years, and currently one-third of all online activity is spent watching video.
We can all agree video is everyone’s preferred method of learning new information, right? Well, maybe not.
A new report from Pew Research Center found that Millennials (yes, the dreaded M-word) are more likely than older generations to prefer reading news over watching it. Roughly four in 10 of those ages 18 to 29 read instead of watch the news.
We all know Millennials are the largest demographic in America, so this study is particularly important for the future of news consumption. But what can it tell us about furniture trends?
At High Point Market a few weeks ago, the word “Millennial” was used more than I’ve ever heard in my life. Companies are scrambling to appeal to Millennials with products specifically aimed at the younger generation. Millennial buyers are seen as a whole different animal, and there’s no easy to way to know what they want.
Herman Miller has always needed New York, and as America’s most liquid market for modernism—its wealth of ideas, its expression, and its consumption—it’s fair to say that, for the last 80 years, New York has also needed Herman Miller. “Though we’ve always been, and still are, a company that has its roots in the Midwest, there’s a long and powerful set of relationships we’ve had with New York City and its people,” says Ben Watson, Herman Miller’s executive creative director.
Global design manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc. today announced the opening of a Herman Miller-branded retail store anchoring the company's New York City flagship. Open to the public as of Tuesday, November 22, 2016, the store occupies 6,000 SF on the ground and second floors of Herman Miller's multi-level presence at 251 Park Avenue South in Manhattan. The store is part of Herman Miller's transformation into a premium lifestyle company, and will offer consumers the opportunity to connect with Herman Miller through a new channel.
It’s always back to the drawing board for this startup. Visual Magnetics, a business that makes high-tech productivity tools, creates magnetic walls that help companies map out their business ideas. Their products can be found in the brainstorm rooms of about 70 percent of WeWork’s buildings.
“The idea is that in a meeting you can sketch your ideas on the walls,” says Shelby Cadiz, a WeWork interior designer.
The creative director behind Visual Magnetics is Tori Deetz, a WeWork Soho West member since 2013. She first introduced her product to WeWork at a community pitch night.
Preview: KI's newest furniture solution for education environments, Ruckus changes paradigms that directly impact the way students and teachers learn, share and relate to one another. As a comprehensive solution, Ruckus increases interaction, engagement, movement and scalability – while augmenting the learning experience.
Oakland-based office furniture manufacturer Friant has signed a 274,147-square-foot lease with Clarion Partners in San Leandro as the site of its future corporate headquarters.
The property, located at 1980 West Avenue 140th St., was a former Sears Roebuck warehouse built in 1958. The 312,866-square-foot industrial building was purchased earlier this year by New York-based Clarion by for $26.5 million. Clarion plans to renovate and update the property by improving exterior cosmetics, removing unnecessary infrastructure and building a new 15,000-square-foot office showroom for Friant’s products.
Around 180 people will be employed at Friant’s San Leandro location, which will function as a corporate headquarters, along with hosting a revamped showroom and manufacturing center for the company. It also serves to consolidate some of the company's warehouse and manufacturing operations, which were spread out across three different facilities in the East Bay.
Legendary designer Charles Pollock returned to the spotlight in 2012 after a 47 year break from the design world to unveil a new series of products for Bernhardt Design. After that success, Pollock continued his relationship with the brand by starting to develop new work for them but unexpectedly passed away in 2013 before it could launch. Now, Bernhardt Design is honoring him with the release of his last collection, Finale.
Leda Furniture has decided to cease production and close its doors after 49 years of manufacturing high-end furniture in Ontario. The Toronto company is currently liquidating its inventory and remaining equipment.
Leda Furniture specialized in contract/office, hospitality and residential furniture, bedroom, dining room, occasional furniture; bookcases, conference tables, desks, office systems, and hotel furniture in its 175,000 square foot operation.
Company president Marco Confalone says it was a difficult decision, and cited the challenges in logistics of manufacturing domestic high-end furniture in Ontario, which he says are becoming too great a challenge. Confalone also cited government regulations, labor rates and materials shortages, as well as the competitive threat of inexpensive furniture manufactured overseas.
