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.
Introducing Pilot by Knoll™, an innovative swivel lounge chair designed by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby of the London-based studio Barber & Osgerby. This is the third collaboration between Knoll and the British design team who also created the Barber Osgerby Lounge Collection in 2014 and the Piton™ Table and Stool Collection in 2015.
National Office Furniture, a unit of Kimball International, Inc., has introduced two new collections: Kozmic and Maneuver collections. The Kozmic collection was designed with flexibility to outfit a variety of spaces. Designed for gathering and interacting, the Maneuver collection is a package includes tables that are collaboration-focused and features shapes designed for interacting.
Trinetic incorporates a new type of movement that creates a completely natural user experience. No manual user adjustments are required. It uses three independent pivot points to create a chair that “follows” rather than resists the user. This promotes better support through a wide range of body movements and is proven to increase contact with the user's body through the full length of the seat and back surface compared to traditional synchronized mechanisms. This provides greater comfort and encourages a more dynamic user experience.
Custer has announced it is a dealer for Orangebox, a U.K.-based company that designs and develops office furniture for collaborative and flexible work environments. Custer will sell Orangebox's Air³ Acoustic Pod, which is an innovative, flexible room that can evolve with an organization as its work environment changes over time.
“Our world of work is changing quickly, therefore work environments you design and build today could change three years from now,” says David Driscol, vice president of regional sales at Custer.
Grand Rapids, Michigan-based furniture manufacturer Studio Wise announces an expanded 2017 line that includes a new table-base collection, additional power options and an enhanced sales experience.
The design and fabrication studio – known for surface products that were inspired by its designs for some of West Michigan’s most iconic restaurants, breweries, clubs and offices – has expanded its offerings not only locally but also on a national level.
Stefan Borselius teamed up with fellow designer Thomas Bernstrand on an innovative seating system for Blå Station called Bob. The Swedish designers created Bob with the simple idea of being able to configure any kind of sofa or seating module you wanted. There are five different modules, each that span only 26 centimeters, that attach to each other to become a either a unique, curvy sofa or a more traditional one, like a 2-seater, 3-seater, 10-seater, and so on – only space is the limit.
It’s not often that you’re told to imagine what the wedding registry of Charles Eames and Judy Jetson would be like. But that’s just how engineering and design firm RockPaperRobot describes its work and credo. Aspiring to create furnishings that are at once aesthetically handsome, functional and robotics inspired, RockPaperRobot has, to date, conceived and developed pieces that seem to defy the laws of physics. Take, for instance, its Float Table, which cleverly uses magnetized components and tensile steel cables to make the table’s wooden cubes appear to float. The firm’s latest endeavor, the Ollie Chair, is equally inventive and smart — and coming soon to Kickstarter.
Khameleon Software has added Haworth Web Services Integration to its software. This integration gives office furniture dealers a direct line to Haworth when it comes to requesting pricing, ordering, and receiving acknowledgements. The integration is designed to help save dealers hours of work and reduce the risk of error. It’s a highly anticipated announcement that comes after months of close collaboration with Haworth and Haworth dealers.
Jasper, Ind. Midwest-based manufacturer Indiana Furniture and their dealer and partner Metro Office Solutions have been awarded a Blanket Purchase Agreement to provide government agencies with traditional wood executive office furniture. The one-year contract, renewable through December 14, 2021, expands Indiana Furnitures role as an approved supplier for furniture requisitions under the National Stock Number Program at GSA Global Supply.
"Indiana Furniture has been a GSA contract holder for nearly two decades, and this award is a direct reflection of the level of quality and service we bring to the market," said Mike Blessinger, VP of Sales and Marketing.
San Francisco-based One Workplace has announced a new venture. According to the office furniture dealership, Pair, based out of San Francisco, will fulfill a long-standing need in the design community by finally giving designers the freedom to tailor furniture easily and affordably.
Pair is being led by Brian Buhl and Brian Wilson, the partners who successfully launched the two brand. Together, Wilson and Buhl plan to create a furniture brand that offers designers more freedom. "Up until now, companies haven't had much of a choice when it comes to furniture design," says Buhl. "There's always been the high-end fashion forward office furniture brands, but now we're giving clients a level of creativity that lets them truly personalize their furniture." Buhl adds, "We have a standard product catalogue, but nothing is precious, everything you see is completely hackable."
By now the health deficits of sitting all day are so widely studied and well-documented that they're impossible to ignore. Studies show that sitting increases lower back pain, slows our metabolisms, and shortens our life-spans, among a host of other things. Not even daily exercise is enough to offset the damage. What's a health-conscious person to do?
One answer: Eliminate chairs altogether. At the interdisciplinary Dutch design studio RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances), brothers and cofounders Ronald and Erik Rietveld have been studying how radically redesigning the workplace and home might affect how sedentary we are. Their installations The End of Sitting, which debuted in 2014, and Breaking Habits, opening at the Mondriaan Fund for Visual Arts in Amsterdam February 16, present chair-free environments that encourage people to get up and move. As Erik puts it, "As long as there are chairs present, people will sit in them habitually."
DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. Friday unveiled an innovation that can transform new and existing DIRTT interior wall systems into foldable, collapsible structures.
It's named Leaf™ and was developed by DIRTT co-founder and product development vice president Geoff Gosling and his team. While foldable walls are nothing new, Leaf breaks new ground in that it can be retrofitted onto any DIRTT environment ever created, thereby protecting clients' existing investments.
Knoll, Inc. Friday announced results for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2016. Net sales were $292.9 million for the fourth quarter, a decrease of 4.2%, from the fourth quarter of 2015. Operating profit for the quarter increased 63.8%, to $35.8 million, compared to operating profit of $21.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2015. Adjusted operating profit was $35.8 million, an increase of 5.6% when compared to adjusted operating profit of $33.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2015. Net earnings for the fourth quarter of 2016 were $21.4 million, an increase of 59.4% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2015. Diluted earnings per share was $0.44 and $0.28 for the fourth quarter of 2016 and 2015, respectively. Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.44 and $0.43 for the fourth quarter of 2016 and 2015, respectively.
A new design district is rapidly emerging just north of Madison Square Park in New York, with retail outlets and showrooms for such upscale commercial and residential brands as Porcelanosa, Sicis, and Duravit. One of the neighborhood’s latest arrivals is the New York flagship for both Bernhardt Design and Bernhardt Textiles. The contract furnishings company’s recently completed 20,000-square-foot showroom created by Rottet Studio with lighting by One Lux Studio features an understated interior design and a gentle illumination that, according to firm principal Lauren Rottet, “clears your head from visual clutter.”
Haworth, Inc. today announced 2016 global sales of USD $1.94 billion, a 6.4% increase from 2015 “Haworth is adapting to today’s changing world by creating solutions for people at work, at home and on the go,” said Franco Bianchi, Haworth President & CEO. “Our commercial interiors, lifestyle designs and performance technology businesses have strong foundations and continue to position Haworth for strong shareholder return. The collaboration across these businesses assist our customers as they adapt to a more mobile and collaborative work style.”
In fields as disparate as healthcare and product development, interdisciplinary teams have emerged as the pathway to better, faster results—for patients, clients and other end users.
By bringing people from different disciplines and with varied specialties together, organizations today are finding new solutions to all kinds of challenges. Creative collaboration is driving innovation.
But cross-functional collaboration is hobbled without the space to support it.
Businesses that are committed to breaking down silos and promoting the cross-pollination of ideas need to provide creative spaces, huddle rooms, project areas, lounges or other communal spaces where people can gather—where they can ask questions, dissect problems, exchange ideas and show examples from their own work. Spaces where teams can be the “melting pot” driving progress.
HNI Corporation Wednesday announced sales for the full year ended December 31, 2016 of $2,203 million, a decrease of 4.4% from sales of $2.304 million in the year earlier quarter, and net income of $86 million or $1.88 per diluted share.
HNI Monday announced the retirement of Kevin Stark, Vice President of Design for HNI Contract Furniture Group, which includes Allsteel, Gunlocke, Paoli and HBF. For the last three years, Stark has acted as design consultant on all four brands. Prior to that, he had spent 30 years with HBF, serving as President of the brand from 2011 until 2014, when he assumed his present position. HBF was acquired by HNI Corporation in 2008.
Commercial Office Interiors has merged with Silicon Valley-based workplace consultants and office furniture products dealer InsideSource.
The combined company will continue to operate from its location at 2601 4th Avenue in Seattle and retain all Commercial Office Interiors (COI) employees including local leadership. Terms of the new business formation were not disclosed. The Seattle office will do business as Commercial Office Interiors, an InsideSource Company. Dozens of InsideSource clients in the San Francisco Bay Area – many of them technology firms, have satellite operations in the Puget Sound area.
Kimball International, Inc. (KBAL) today announced second quarter fiscal year 2017 net sales of $169.9 million, an increase of 4% over the prior year second quarter, and net income of $8.7 million, an increase of 34% over the prior year second quarter. Excluding prior year restructuring charges, adjusted net income increased 13%. Earnings per diluted share for the second quarter was $0.23 compared to $0.17 per share earned in the prior year quarter, or $0.21 per share excluding prior year restructuring charges.
