Posts Tagged ‘NeoCon’

NeoCon East - New Commercial Furniture Part 5

Saturday, December 3rd, 2011

Worksurfaces were in evidence everywhere at NeoCon East this year. Here are just a few of the desks and tables that stood around looking impressive at the Baltimore convention:

All-in One and One for All

This ISE All-in-One Desk is designed for student or employee training environments. It isn’t just ergonomic – it’s electric! The desk features an automated lift mechanism to raise and lower the flat screen monitor. This means the monitor can be hidden away when it would interfere with line of sight to the instructor. The CPU shelf is part of the leg of the desk for both use and storage. Cables are all tucked away neatly in the body of the desk. The whole thing is on casters so it can be relocated easily as needed.

Hello, Motus!

This piece of office furniture combines the best features of a conference table and a Murphy wall bed. When you use the table, it looks like a normal boardroom table with a classic dark wood or ultra-modern white glass finish. When you store the Motus, the legs rotate out and the top flips up to minimize the floor area required to store the table. The first table you roll into a corner or closet takes up a space only 24” deep. Each additional table in the nested series only adds an extra 15” to the overall storage footprint. This table is more fun than a transformer robot and less likely than a Decepticon to destroy human civilization as we know it.

Do I Hear an Ekko?

This table doesn’t have any fancy moving parts. It doesn’t have to. The Ekko Table Series from Davis Furniture arrests the viewer with the sheer beauty of its architecture and the richness of its materials. The table top rests on a swirled tripod of metal that’s unlike any other table leg or column in the office furniture industry. The list of available “toppings” is better than what you’d find at your favorite froYo shop. You can choose traditional surfaces like solid marble or select a rainbow of colors or patterns captured in clear resin with a tabletop by 3form®.

NeoCon East - New Commercial Furniture Part 4

Friday, November 25th, 2011

This week, it’s time to take a look at what NeoCon East participants found underfoot. There were a number of new commercial floor coverings on display – including a collection from Atlas Carpet Mills. The Archeologique line features modular carpet tiles with a velvet-cut pile surface. The pile is carved with what Atlas describes as a selection of 5 different “organic and linear loop textures” in 24 colors. These ancient glyphs bring a sophisticated touch to walkways while letting the eye wander over patterns that evoke ancient cities and unearthed ruins.

NeoCon East - New Commercial Furniture Part 3

Saturday, November 19th, 2011

Next up on our tour of new items for the office is Peter Pepper Products, Inc. This firm introduced two lines of recycling receptacles for use in the workplace. The HexBin (as its name suggests) is intended for use in groups of 2 or more that fit together like pieces of a honeycomb. The bins can be used for paper, aluminum, glass, plastic, or trash depending on the lid and labeling you choose. There’s even a rain hood you can attach for outdoor locations. These bins come in sizes up to 37 gallons for use in large facilities.

The REMIX collection is a sleeker version of single and dual waste stream recycling bins. These oval bins are finished with a dent resistant aluminum composite in your choice of silver, bronze, white, or stainless. The semi-rigid bin liners are made of recycled billboards – a very hip and ironic way for Peter Pepper to advertise the sustainability of its products.

NeoCon East: New Commercial Furniture Part 2

Monday, November 7th, 2011

We’re headed across the country again in this second post on the NeoCon East office furniture show. This time, let’s take a journey through Inscape System. This “Inscape” workstation and panel solution is designed to help employers “Escape” from wasted space and confusing office furniture specification. Like many popular cubicle brands, the goal of this product is to provide a wide range of pieces that can be mixed and matched with little effort. Ensuring interoperability of as many parts as possible provides more options while ensuring that future expansion is seamless and worry free.

Conserving Office Space Inch by Inch

The most well-publicized feature of Inscape’s product line is the ability to use multiple panel thicknesses to save space here and there without any integration issues. The extra inches you save can add up to quite a few square feet – perhaps even enough to comfortably accommodate a couple more workstations as your company grows.

For locations where you don’t need full 3.5” panels, you can install 2.75” panels instead. The universal connectors work with either one – you just flip the connector over from position A to position B to connect two thin panels rather than two thick ones. The frame and tile components are identical for both. It’s the clip components that determine the interior dimensions of the panel. Worksurfaces and other parts work equally well with both panel thicknesses because the frames are all the same.

Beneath the Surface

Although the lines and shapes of Inscape’s designs are simple, what you see is not all you get with this system. The post and beam structure that supports panels and movable walls also houses power distribution. This means it can be used for data cable and electrical wiring management just as easily in a private office as in a cubicle. Again, it’s all about one stop shopping with these guys.

NeoCon East: New Commercial Furniture Part 1

Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Wow, first there was NeoCon in Chicago, then NeoCon Canada, and now there’s NeoCon East to talk about! Pretty soon, they’ll have to change the name from NeoCon to PerpetualCon. As always, the big names in office furniture all put in an appearance last week. The Tweetosphere was chirping with news and invitations to come see this booth or that. The most exciting part of the convention was (naturally), all the new products making their debut. In this series, we’ll take a virtual stroll through the marketplace to see what our favorite manufacturers are up to.

Humanscale

The Float™ work table actually made its first appearance at the Chicago NeoCon event, but it’s being shown to a different group of potential buyers at NeoCon East in Baltimore. As you might suspect, this Maryland event is focused on government buying programs. We’ll see if this sit/stand desking solution becomes a popular GSA item for ergonomic workspaces.

The idea of a height-adjustable worksurface has been explored in many different iterations by various manufacturers. Some use a motor to lift and lower the worksurface. Others rely on manual adjustment. The Float takes its mechanical inspiration from the principle of counterbalanced motion. This means very little force is required to shift the surface up or down – even when it is loaded with a hundred pounds of office equipment. In fact, Humanscale says you can operate the adjustment feature with one hand to float the tabletop into your desired position.

The table has a 20” range of motion to accommodate sitting and standing workers of many different heights. Options include different table widths from 36-72” and colors ranging from silver to black or white. You can even mount a tabletop from another manufacturer on the Float table base if you prefer a different look. So, that’s what’s up (and down) in the realm of adjustable workstations at NeoCon this year.

Chair Hockey For Charity

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

Canada is known for three things – maple syrup, Niagara Falls, and hockey. This love for hockey extends beyond the ice rink and into the office arena. IIDEX/NeoCon Canada and the Interior Designers of Canada actually hosted an ergonomic office chair hockey tournament in September. More than half a dozen teams competed, sponsored by manufacturers such as Teknion, Allsteel, Herman Miller, Haworth, and Steelcase.

Who wins when office furniture companies fight? In this case, Ronald McDonald House Toronto. Team members spent as much energy reaching fundraising goals as they did trying to score goals during game play. By all reports, the event was a smashing success!

Teknion Captures Awards at NeoCon Canada

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Like the opposite of a migratory bird, NeoCon apparently goes north as the weather gets cooler. Teknion is one of the major furniture manufacturers who trekked up to Toronto this September to participate in the IIDEX/NeoCon Canada show. This move paid off with some very nice prizes (including a nod for one of the best booth designs). Innovation was the deciding factor in selecting winners. The company took home a total of 4 awards – 3 silver and 1 bronze. Here are some highlights of the winning items:

Dossier

This executive furniture collection has a distinctly Scandinavian look with its wood finish and trimmed down, straight lines. The modular nature of this line ensures that components can be combined to fit any office space without looking shoehorned into place. It definitely gives off an air of quality without being even a little bit ostentatious.

AL3

This synchro-tilt executive task chair features a range of adjustment features from seat height to tilt tension and lock. But it does this without having lots of knobs and twiddly bits messing with the streamlined aesthetic of the chair. The arms, base, and cradle supporting the chair come in glossy aluminum or ebony to fit a shiny or somber office theme. The back can be finished with upholstery or mesh depending on whether you are going for cushy or austere.

Expansion

Teknion advertises this collection as having more than 26,000 components. That’s about as expansive as you can get. At the same time, the company claims that the uniform product platform simplifies planning since you can use the same collection to furnish so many different office spaces from workstations to meeting rooms. This definitely sounds like a situation where you need to tell your office space consultant what you want to accomplish and let him put together your order to make sure no components are missing!

Best of NeoCon Software Tech

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

Some of the most interesting “Best of NeoCon” entries aren’t physical furnishings at all. Instead, they are software technologies that are designed to enhance the workplace. Here are a couple that might improve how businesses go about office space planning and furniture selection:

20-20 Visual Impression

This 3D office layout and furniture design software tool is intended for office furniture dealers to use in customer consultations. It’s being marketed as more than simply “imaging”. Because the user can change the viewing perspective to see the furnishings from every angle, this is being referred to as “visualization” software. One big selling point for dealers is likely to be the speed with which the imagery can be updated with new specs and the fact that the solution is integrated with a huge library of manufacturer surfacing and finish options. Less time spent manually entering new textile, laminate, and paint data could save a lot of time.

Photo Lab in CET Designer

This software package from Configura, Inc. continues to evolve in collaboration with manufacturers like Steelcase, Teknion, and Haworth to ensure a complete and accurate catalogue of specifications. The drag and drop function lets users add and remove various workstations and other furniture items easily while delivering photorealistic renderings. It automatically inserts hardware and other components that might be overlooked in a simpler software system. This also helps with the final step – putting together an order with all the parts needed to complete the carefully designed “look”.

Why so much attention on imaging and planning software?

Office furniture companies that don’t invest in some form of accurate and realistic imaging software will be left in the dust. At Cubicles Office Environments, we always offer software generated plans in our free consultation process so our clients can see and understand exactly what they are getting. But we know that fancy images are just half of the picture. We also stand behind the comprehensive quotes we put together. If we accidentally forget a necessary component during the design process, we will pay for it ourselves.

What Did Haworth Get Up To At NeoCon 2011?

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

It’s fun to scroll through all the slideshows vendors have created to showcase their participation at NeoCon. Haworth really went all out in crafting an exhibit environment that pulls together different elements of a modern office into a cohesive whole. The use of vivid color is particularly appealing, so don’t miss out on the visuals they’ve provided in their showroom slideshow.

The layouts incorporated “Reside” desking along with “Beside” storage, two of the company’s newer product offerings. Perhaps next year Haworth will debut a range of meeting room furniture called “Preside” and a bike-to-work program called “Astride”? All joking “Aside”, the Haworth brand made a strong showing at NeoCon, bringing home 3 gold and 2 silver awards. That’s nothing to sneeze at!

Good NeoCon Results For Knoll – On the Surface!

Friday, August 12th, 2011

Plenty of the “big boys” at NeoCon walked away with top prizes for office furniture. But Knoll has things “covered” from a different angle. This company really shone in the textile category, earning gold and silver awards for 2 new fabric collections.

KnollTextiles’ Vista (designed by Dorothy Cosonas) received gold recognition. This line is made up of 5 fabrics designed for healthcare settings. It includes privacy curtains and high-performance upholstery textiles. The Bloom design comes in a variety of pastel colors from peach to periwinkle with a dense cluster of print at the border that opens out into a serene pattern of falling petals. Upholstery fabrics like Grandview blend high and low sheen yarns in rich colors for a deeply textured effect.

The Ink collection received the Silver award for wall coverings. These graphically printed textiles look like a blend between modern art and a biology experiment. The Drip series has a certain Pollock-esque quality while the Drop pattern looks like hugely magnified pollen or bacteria. Designer Abbott Miller says the inspiration for these patterns came from playing around with the movement of ink on paper.

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