6.2.08 | Kimball Office just might steal the show this year with its launch of Hum. Minds at Work.™ O.K., you have to like cute to clap with glee for the name, but the concept, execution (as far as we can tell from images), and underlying research move Kimball Office up with the leaders of the class in the North American contract furniture area. With its striking showroom at 325 North Wells, designed by TVS Interiors, and its relaxing views overlooking the Chicago River, the short trip across the street from the Mart is an essential stop.

6.2.08 | After years of experiencing the building through AutoCAD layers and endless combinations of PowerPoint slides, I was finally walking through the door of Haworth Center in Holland, MI. I floated past the greeters in a stupor, and felt my knees go weak. Is this waking life, or am I trapped in a Perkins+Will rendering?

6.2.08 | Carnegie (www.carnegiefabrics.com) introduced an exciting new Xorel product at the Hospitality & Design Show, and we just couldn’t wait until NeoCon to get the details. What we discovered was, thanks to a newly developed process of embroidering, Xorel Embroider was born. It’s available in 8 patterns that include plaids: Axis Embroider and florals Laurel Embroider.

6.2.08 | Coalesse (Mart Suite 1032), (an obvious play on the word coalesce, to fuse or unite into a whole) is the new name for Brand 3, and, in a sense, is a new guise for the now defunct Steelcase Design Partnership, some of the products and parts of which transferred to Coalesse and other Steelcase divisions or reporting lines.

6.2.08 | The newly refreshed DIRTT showroom (across the street from the Mart with Kimball at 325 N. Wells) is an ode to environmental sustainability’s tenets –Reduce and Reuse. It is proof conscientiousness doesn'’t mean less design or function.

6.2.08 | Geiger is going to have a big NeoCon 08, the first under the overall direction of Steve Gane, president. Apparently Mr. Gane remembers the success of his tenure at HBF when that company, now a competitor, seemed to grow products at increasing volume each NeoCon.

6.2.08 | What are HBF and HBF Textiles doing for NeoCon 08? The world wants to know. HBF is one of several smaller companies that play such and important part in the interiors industry that no NeoCon would be complete without them. Indeed, it is not a stretch to say they carried the show last year, and very ably so.

6.2.08 | I like Inscape, It’'s a plucky company with some very good ideas and a smart management team. I just visited with Peter Brunelle, President and CEO, and Sharad Mathur, Director of Marketing and Product Management. Mr. Brunelle, the former Herman Miller fellow, has been in position for three years and is now pretty happy with his back office and manufacturing set up, and now will be focusing on the front part: products, sales and distribution. Mr. Mathur, obviously, has a major part in that, and I was fortunate to spend some time with him alone while Mr. Brunelle was wrapping up other business.

6.2.08 | Well known in the industry for more than 70 years, Luxo U.S. has been under the direction of Sam Gumins for the past three years. Of late, the company has been more successful in distributing its lab magnifying products, but Mr. Gumins has convince the parent company in Norway that the North American task lighting market deserves some designs of its own.

6.2.08 | NeoCon 08 is just around the corner and its everyone out for themselves. But, still, you’ll find some nurturing, especially at Nurture by Steelcase, where Steelcase’s new total experience approach is in full swing. Only two years old, Nurture has had a great impact already, with its contributions to the largest company in the industry being specifically mention in the financial reports. That surely must add a small cushion of comfort to management as it reads the financial news these days.

6.2.08 | Qdesign, Oakbrook, IL, and a division of Whitney, Inc., has developed products for some of the leading furniture manufacturers. Still, it has been able to hold true to its core design-driven principles and the belief that design can solve problems and provide solutions for companies.

5.26.08 | Sustainable design got a very visible boost this week with the opening of Haworth’'s radically reworked headquarters building. Heralded during its design and construction phases as a model of environmental sensitivity, the structure unveiled on May 21 delivers convincingly on its promise.

5.26.08 | Configura. The word rolls off the tongue as easily as the images nimbly flow from the fingers with its impressive presentation and specification software, CET Designer. As indicated in a previous issue (officeinsight 5.5.08), Configura (NeoCon Booth 7-7046) appears to be in a head-to-head race with the similarly facile with Ice Business Solutions’ ICE java tool to win the hearts, minds and imaginations of dealers, designers and clients.

5.26.08 | Steelcase is definitely heating up, with its support of A&D (see officeinsight 3.24.08, Dan Chong and Design Community Collaboration and 8.13.07 Steelcase’s Applied Research Consulting), its dealerships (officeinsight this issue, Configura), its focus on the environment (officeinsight 5.12.08, SeaChange at Steelcase), and in its product offerings. Last week we indicated that it will be a Steelcase year at NeoCon World Trade Fair 08. It’s new mega-showroom on the 3^rd floor of the at the Merchandise Mart should be something to behold. 

5.26.08 | Colebrook, Bosson, Saunders caught my attention over ten years ago when I was trying to find a way to get an 85lb, 21 inch CRT off of my desk. While flat-screen monitors were not price-attractive in those days, at least CBS was thinking along the same lines as I was, and was offering more elegance than was typically of the upright computer carts found in hospitals.

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.