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.
Design Within Reach, the largest retailer of authentic modern furniture and accessories in the world, today announces the opening of its newest retail space in Portland, Ore., located in the North Pearl District's Stagecraft Building, a circa 1890 two-story brick warehouse that originally served as a distribution center for pottery and housewares.
The new Dwell x Target home collection, offering modern pieces at attractive prices, is in stores and online today. /react-text
It’s time to put your holiday gift cards to good use—giving physical form to Dwell’s editorial vision, the Modern by Dwell Magazine home collection is available today at select Target stores and Target.com. Featuring over 120 products, the line includes indoor and outdoor furniture, tabletop items, lighting, decor, and accessories. This collaboration between Dwell and Target not only makes thoughtful, modern design more accessible with prices ranging from $16.99 to $399.99, but also fits in with a variety of homes and lifestyles.
I'm not generally a fan of wall-mounted desks because it's often nicer to position as desk so the end user is not looking at the wall. But in some small spaces a wall-mounted desk is the best alternative. We've mentioned the Ledge from Urbancase before, but there are many more designs worth a look.
In a studio apartment in downtown Philadelphia, off Rittenhouse Square, I stood awaiting a product demonstration. Stephen Kuhl, a founder of the start-up Burrow, apologized that he had only a beta version to show me — the actual production model would feature some minor aesthetic tweaks. The other founder, Kabeer Chopra, motioned for me to give it a try. I sat down. It was definitely a couch.
Burrow is on an enviable trajectory right now. The company is a graduate of the prestigious Bay Area tech accelerator Y Combinator; it also has a healthy list of pre-orders for its product’s planned debut in January. But given that pedigree, the product is an unusual one: couches. Not cloud-connected couches or remote-controlled couches — just couches. Technically, the company makes a couch, singular, available in a few different colors and configurations. The one I was sitting on belonged to Jess Goodman, a friend of the founders and an early supporter. Its design was midcentury modern unexceptional, and it was perfectly nice. But the couch is not Burrow’s main attraction. Burrow is selling a couch experience.
Although it looks like an ordinary office desk, the Flex can be so many more things: A coffee table on which to prop your feet while watching TV on the couch, a spot to enjoy a quick meal, or a cocktail table on which to set down a drink. That’s because it’s equipped with a high-tech, microprocessor-controlled lift system that raises and lowers the desk to over 200 different positions with a touch of a button. And because it’s powered by a compact lithium-ion battery, there’s no pesky cord to deal with. Best of all, you can plop it down in any part of the house.
Designed with busy multi-taskers in mind who want to get the most out of their furniture and living space, the Flex by NextDesk adapts to your needs—whether that is to have a multi-purpose table, or a multi-purpose room. Raise the table to standing height, and any room turns into a workspace. Lower it to chair level, and now it’s a surface on which to draw, dine, play cards, or do any number of activities.
West Elm's new office in a converted warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront looks, in a word, Brooklyn. Exposed wood beams? Check. Polished concrete floors? Yes. Brick walls? Of course. Swanky furniture? Naturally. The space embodies the warm-modern sensibility that has brought the brand financial success in the past few years. But look more closely at the composition—handmade goods, office furniture, and artwork all manufactured by West Elm and its partners—and you'll see a physical representation of the brand's growth and evolution, from a residential retailer into a design behemoth as it spins its trademark domestic aesthetic into the world of offices and hotels.
Midcentury mania is in full swing, and even the late, great Zaha Hadid couldn’t stay away. With her untimely death in March, Hadid left behind a slew of works in progress, including her final furniture collection for long-time friend and gallerist David Gill. Designed by Hadid in close collaboration with Patrik Schumacher, current principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, UltraStellar was Inspired by wooden pieces from the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Though the materials—walnut and leather—feel familiar and vintage, the forms are predictably Zaha, which is to say, out of this world. Fluidity and a sense of weightlessness pervade the series, which comprises a four-piece coffee table that encloses a hole, a large dining table with a glass eye in the middle, and arched chairs. UltraStellar is on view at David Gill Gallery in London through October 2016.
Stop and think about how many hours you spend sitting in an office chair hunched over a computer. Don’t you think your butt deserves to be cradled in something more luxurious than whatever was on sale at Staples? The Elysium chair isn’t cheap, but it’s brilliantly engineered to make you never want to get up again.
Designed and engineered by David Hugh who earned a PhD in bioengineering and spent 10 years developing an equation that defines how posture is affected by gravitational forces. That equation is what led to the development of the technology behind the Elysium chair, and is one of the secrets behind why it’s promised to be extremely comfortable.
West Elm has been showing their commitment to artisans and designers in many ways lately with their local program and their Minted x West Elm collaboration. Now, they’ve taken it to the next level with the West Elm Makers Studio, a state-of the-art creative workspace located at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York.
The space is pretty expansive at 11,600 sq. ft. and will house more than a dozen artists, designers and craftsmen who design and develop West Elm products. If you’ve ever wanted to see or know how/where your products come from, then this is the perfect opportunity because they’re holding guided tours during second annual Industry City open studio event THIS Saturday, April 18 from 11 AM to 6 PM. I hope we’ll be able to stop by and check it out soon—It’s like a dream creative workspace!
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?
Ori, a startup born from an MIT Media Lab project, thinks furniture should be a robotic shapeshifter. And it hired Yves Béhar to design it.
While companies like ABC Home and Design Within Reach tout the idea of bringing high design to the masses, their items are still out of reach for most of us. That's especially true for frequent movers, for whom it's hard to justify shelling out big money for furniture that might get left behind.
It's not uncommon for creative individuals to branch out to other design mediums and trades. Therefore, it is no surprise that some of the world's most well-known architects and designers have segued into crafting products and, more specifically, furniture. Like Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand before them, these seven architects have collaborated with furniture manufacturers to design products that are reminiscent of their architectural aesthetics.
WHILE SOME COMPANIES try to entice young talent with stair-adjacent slides and comic-book color schemes, a course offered at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., in partnership with Bernhardt Design company, has a simpler approach: Have students design the modern workplace themselves, one piece of furniture at a time.
Moving is the bane of a renter's existence. Shall I count the ways? From negotiating hairpin turns on stairwells to squeezing through narrow doorways and ponying up hundreds of dollars to some man with a van, it's all pretty dreadful.
Gorgeous furniture is only half of Milan Design Week, the largest, most prestigious design fair of the year. The other half? Head-scratching conceptual projects and design experiments that push the field into the future. Think about interior designs that morph over time, stools made from 3-D printing scraps, and even a petting zoo that stabilizes your mood. We scoured the city to find the best, most cutting-edge designs. Think of this as a guide to the living room of tomorrow.
