5.19.08 | Do you want to celebrate interior design, the effective use of facilities, and the importance of interiors to human vitality and creativity? Here is another chance. It’'s going to be a great NeoCon World Trade Fair 08, from many perspectives. For comprehensive information about this years event, go to www.mmart.com

5.19.08 | Learn a bit more about two speakers scheduled to present at NeoCon this year. Tim Springer, President, HERO, Inc. and Elaine Aye, Principal, Green Building Services, offer some "insight" into who they are and how they work by answering a few of our questions.

5.19.08 | Many seminars at this year’s NeoCon caught our eye at first glance. The following is a sampling of the offerings. This list is by no means complete and is intended only to give readers an idea of the breadth of the offerings, and should not be taken as a quality assessment; we haven’'t listened or attended any of them.

5.19.08 | With a name like Acuity, Allsteel’'s new ergonomic task chair is a natural for us at officeinsight. So, we schlepped down to the Skylight at 257 Hudson Street in lower Manhattan last Tuesday for the formal NYC launch of this very classy and comfortable sitting tool.

5.19.08 | Carl Magnusson has recently designed a new wood guest chair for Teknion, the Synapse, to be launched at Neocon 08. Synapses design meets several objectives, embodying the expected attributes of aesthetics, ergonomics, and price while addressing sustainability concerns and the ever-increasing cost of transportation and assembly.

5.19.08 | There are many things about Humanscale that are difficult not to admire. The first is that the company is grounded on ergonomics – call it human factors or just plain people-centric – gives a healthy shift to the focus on sustainability that is too often lost in a rush to obtain LEED certification or to save the planet. It'’s not that human centricity is the best perspective for solving our environmental problems, it’s not. But by appealing to human nature- –the aggrandizement of the species and the self- –we are most likely to save the Earth as an enjoyable human habitat.

5.12.08 | Steelcase and Jeannie Bochette organized an event of Shakespearian import a couple of weeks ago. Presented by Roger Payne (biologist) and Lisa Harrow (actress and author) of the SeaChange Institute, SeaChange: Reversing the Tide is performance art that combines science and poetry to make the point that “man is not the overseer of life but an integral part of life’s complex web, and that our survival requires that we attend not just to our own wellbeing, but also to the wellbeing of the entire web of life.”

5.12.08 | Milan was teeming with energy from the first moment I landed, on the eve of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile. It was my first time to the Salone, and I didn'’t know what to expect, but the feeling in the city was equivalent to a bubble about to burst, stretching and expanding until finally giving way to the momentum of the event. When the bubble bursts on the first day of the fair, the city comes alive with design.

5.12.08 | The International Contemporary Furniture Fair will take place May 17-20 at New York City's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 West 34th Street. More than 25,000 interior designers, architects, retailers, designers, manufacturers, representatives, distributors, and developers are expected to attend during the Fair’s four day run.

5.5.08 | Milan'’s premiere design museum, the Trienalle di Milano, states: to know Italian design, you have to understand Italy and vice versa. We are back from the 2008 Salone Internazionale del Mobile (Salone) to report on the latest in European design trends, and after spending days afoot in the exhibition halls, it became clear that I was due for a refresher course in Italian design (and Italian language, for that matter).

5.5.08 | Introduction
Most architects are faced with significant competition when they decide to compete for a large industrial facility design project; when the process includes both architects and design-build contractors this competition often becomes both more severe and more polarized. And neither the design firm nor the developer is often able to step out of their metaphor for industrial design quality.

5.5.08 | There’'s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Charles and Ray Eames left an astounding legacy to the world of design. From film to product design, this couple created timeless pieces that still resonate to fresh minds today. This year, IIDA Northern California chose to honor them at the 2008 Pioneers in Design event. Charles’ daughter Lucia Eames, and her daughter Llisa Demetrios came to the Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco to represent their family legacy, and to share with us many pictures of the couple and their house that had never before been made public.

5.5.08 | Project/product rapid prototyping and specification software we be an indispensable tool for manufacturer-dealer sales people and interior designers within the next five years. This software represents a great leap forward from the current dealer specification tools and now equips dealers and interior designers to collaborate to most effectively present to clients their project capabilities.

5.5.08 | The worlds of interior design and fashion travel in similar, but differing circles. Rarely do the two worlds collide with such force and grandeur as on the evening of the Emerging Green Builder’s Project Earth Day, an eco-friendly fashion show put on by the USGBC’s young professional contingent. Teknion positions itself right in the thick of things by hosting the event at its New York City showroom, a space that perfectly suits the event’s eco-minded theme as well as the stylishly chic crowd.

5.5.08 | As the industry quakes as the present economic difficulties recall the blood-letting earlier this decade, thoughts inevitably turn toward areas less struck by business cycles. Those include government work and, as if to create some silver lining the IIDA (International Interior Design Association (and Tandus are collaborating to produce a series of events in 2008 for government designers, and in particular members of IIDA’s Government Forum.