Thursday, June 16, 2011

NEOCON11; a furniture roundup

You know how the Indy 500 has the tag line "The greatest spectacle in racing"? Well for some reason, every time I say "NeoCon" the little voice inside my head chimes in with 'the greatest spectacle in designing'. I really have no idea why, but I would say it's pretty correct.

I digress. Monday I had the joy (or pain if you ask my feet) of attending NeoCon at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. I did a horrid job of remembering to take photos and the photos I did take aren't so great. But here they are in their glory. Some items are new and some are just new to me.

 This is the Hon Ceres chair. A nice looking, affordable chair that has a cute sister side chair. Loved this so much I just specified 156 of them for the mega project.

 This chair is by Spec Furniture and I unfortunately do not know the name of it. Somewhere between the slap-wrist watches and iridescent tote bags they were handing out, I managed to forget the name. I do remember I loved it though because the mesh fabric was sooper-dooper soft and it felt so comfortable. Plus it was petite, which doesn't happen often in a task chair. This one has a coordinating side chair and stool.

 And just for fun, Spec made a table (their Cha Cha table) with a recycled money top. Oh yeah, dolla-dolla-bills yall; on yo table top. Old shredded money pressed and finished with a resin-like material. Kinda makes me depressed though.

 This sofa/lounge thingamabobber is by Gunlocke and I mostly loved it for the textured fabric.

 This is the Nucraft Arena. This pretty little baby has crispy clean open legs and a variety of panel options for the back. Nucraft was also smart and built in outlets so you can plug right into the seat. Smart, huh?

Ugh. Horrible photo, no doubt. Regardless, this was one of the COOLEST things I saw on Monday. Meet Steelcase's media:scape. A video conferencing solution that is ultra easy and going to be huge in the industry. It comes in four parts: tables, lounge seating, the video conference screens, and the connectivity between computer and screen.

Here is an image of the lounge with a table and screen for a different type of set-up available.

 
 Steelcase also had their new version of the Node chair. I love the look of this. Such a smart looking classroom chair.

Another awesomely designed chair from Steelcase: i2i. Ask me why it's named that! Actually, I'm not entirely sure but I made up a reason and it sounds darn good to me. The chair swivels in two ways and I don't mean two directions. I mean the seat pad itself can swivel and the back and arms can swivel the opposite way. Meaning it's a super fun chair. (Notice how I've used super a lot? It's because it was all super.) So you can swivel around and see eye to eye with the person next to you. Hence i2i. Whatever.

And lastly from Steelcase is Airtouch which is a pneumatic table with digital screen stating the table height. It moves smoothly and easily to reach a wide range of height options.