NeoCon’08 identifies many new trends in workplace design and furnishings

By Peter S. Kimmel, AIA, IFMA Fellow
Publisher, FMLink

June 27, 2008—If there are any new trends impacting the furniture and furnishing marketplace, NeoCon is one show where attendees, after a couple of days of being there, not only can identify the trends, but will feel as if they can live and breathe them. So it is no surprise that after attending the 2008 show June 9-11 in Chicago, a new perspective has arisen on the future of the workplace. This year’s show was attended by over 50,000 people.

There were the usual number of new products and innovations, and a sustainability story as well, but the big theme out of this year’s NeoCon is that manufacturers are presenting new ways to work better. And the best news is that to a large extent, they are coming up with solutions that enable one to mix and match across product lines, resulting in a well-designed space that doesn’t require one to go out and buy everything new to make it look good.

• Collaboration. The buzzword this year was collaboration. Spaces are being designed to be flexible enough for impromptu meetings to take place, and the furniture will accommodate those needs. Because furniture will be moved around quite a bit, it is important that the design styles be compatible with one another, or can be outfitted to make everything look just right, and without major expense. Sometimes, two or three people from neighboring workstations will need to get together, and sometimes, representatives from several departments will need to get together, often for an impromptu, spur-of-the-moment meeting.
• Seating. Task and stack seating have undergone an evolution as well. Both ergonomic task seating and stackers have come out with a wide variety of styles and features, and a price range to match. And even seating has a buzzword: weight-activated. Imagine invisible sensors figuring out how far you are leaning back, and adjusting the support accordingly so you don’t need your legs to balance! And to accommodate the collaboration, seating is being designed to work well not only as a task seat, but as one that can easily slide (with the occupant in it) to move into a nearby meeting.
• Sustainability. Even though sustainability is no longer a new thing, major advances continue to be made. A few years ago, to address sustainability, companies chose to take a variety of unidirectional approaches, such as having a product or two that had many sustainability characteristics, or to incorporate a material onto a product where the material had some type of sustainability message. This year, companies seemed to take a more macro approach to sustainability, incorporating it into their entire product lines. Instead of companies’ saying that a given product uses a recyclable polypropylene, for example, they may say that a product is 90% recyclable and made out of 72% recycled materials. Both these statistics are significant, as they have different meanings. We also saw the importance of the concept dubbed cradle-to-cradle (see more on this below), as well as how sustainability will force designers and facilities managers to work closer together than ever before.
• More open spaces. Very closely related to sustainability, the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ) requirement of having no panels above 42″ (to allow more natural daylight through the space, thereby requiring less of a lighting and ensuing heating load), is resulting in a very different ambiance in the workplace. It is brighter and more cheerful—but noisier as well. This will increase the importance of sound masking, and next year, I expect to see more integration between some of the furniture manufacturers’ products and the solutions offered by the sound masking companies.
• In our “Miscellaneous” section below, we will report on a very cool tool developed by Herman Miller to measure space utilization—the percentage of time one’s workstation is really occupied. We also include a new paint to turn any wall into a dry-erase board, and a way to integrate storage into K-12 classroom furniture.

And what about last year’s trends? In a nutshell, they have continued to evolve. None have been forgotten as a passing fad. To see more about the 2007 trends, see last year’s NeoCon story; here is a summary of where we are with those trends:

• Sustainability is still a hot topic, as will be described in more depth below.
• Teleworking and changing work styles has led, to an extent, to the more collaborative spaces that we see today. And we continue to see more workstations developed with that “at home”, friendly feel. Not only do these designs work in the home, but they contribute to making the office appear as a less intimidating place to work.
• The trend of less deep work surfaces, initiated by smaller, flat panel monitors continues, and with the exception of stand-alone executive desks, most furniture shown was not very deep.

When one puts it all together, one sees a very different type of workplace than just a few years ago. If I look at where we are now, I envision an integrated workplace that is very functional. It is one that works for those working independently, for those working together, and for those who change back-and-forth from one way to the other.

I also am seeing a more friendly workplace, one that people will enjoy. It is less intimidating. We will know that we are in a workplace that helps us sustain our environment, without its drawing attention to itself. Each aspect of our work environment from the lighting to the furniture to the carpeting will be doing its part to conserve.

Below, I will fill the rest of this article with some of the many examples at NeoCon that illustrate these trends. Wherever we can, we link to other stories on FMLink, so you can find out more about each product that appears. The examples below are not intended to be all-inclusive—there are far too many products at NeoCon for us to accomplish that; they simply are to illustrate our points.

Collaborative spaces

Close your eyes and let your imagination run wild with possibilities and you will begin to get an idea of the myriad of ways to collaborate, as shown at NeoCon’08. Should people be sitting or standing? Should they be just talking, or showing each other solutions through their laptops, or via a presentation on the big screen? Should they be able to get together with all their files and supplies? Should they be able to get together at a moment’s notice? All this is now possible.

Steelcase’s c:scape very deservedly won a Best of NeoCon Gold in the Furniture Systems category. By incorporating technology at an easy-to-reach height, and with low panels (under 42″), c:scape makes it very easy to have back-to-back workstations in a variety of configurations. When one needs privacy, one can effortlessly bring over two posts connected by an expandable fabric (solid or with openings) that extends similarly to be an accordion door.

If one needs to collaborate electronically, Steelcase’s media:scape, which won a Gold in the Conference Table category, offers a way for several individuals to slide their seats over, bringing their laptops. All laptops can be plugged in and connected without bending to the ground to look for an outlet. Each person’s laptop is connected to a central screen, visible to all in the meeting. When one pushes a button on the puck, one will take control of what will be on display for the group.

Hum. Minds at Work by Kimball incorporates a series of workstations that can be combined in many ways. Instead of using panels between adjacent workstations, Hum uses an openwork design made out of laser-cut steel with random patterns of openings that run the range from filtering distractions to being large enough to look through when one wants to communicate with the person on the other side. Hum also uses horizontal planes (“Terraces”) to give workers a means of sorting their work, or to share it with others.

Herman Miller’s Teneo won not only the Gold for the Filing and Storage Category, but took home the Best of Competition—the highest award at NeoCon. Imagine a totally flexible system (in terms of both components and moveability). The system can come on casters, so it is easy to move from one group to another; it can be outfitted with any combination of drawers and filing components, and each piece can have any finish and material so that it can fit into whatever design configuration the user wants.

Teknion previewed its Expansion Desking line, a contemporary, freestanding desking system that accommodates the LEED 42" barrier and provides a very accessible and comprehensive, easy-to-reach wire management system.

Tayco’s Up system uses a minimum amount of materials, accommodating storage on both sides of the workstation, without the need for panels. The storage units have interchangeable components and are available in casters or feet; the interchangeability makes it easy to integrate Up with other areas of the workplace. A unique leveling design works for the entire system, regardless of whether casters or feet are employed.

Coalesse, a new premium brand of furniture comprised of Brayton, Metro and Vecta, integrated the features of each product, resulting in everything one needs for a total office solution.

	Steelcase’s c:scape is designed to help people connect and collaborate, quickly and seamlessly.		Teknion’s redesigned Expansion desk system is designed for collaborative work environments.
Herman Miller’s Teneo storage system comes in a variety of heights and can have a variety of finishes and materials (or none!).

Hum. Minds at Work, by Kimball Office, is designed to bring out the best in workers.

Tayco’s Up storage line includes adjustable height and leveling features, providing unique space planning capabilities.

Electric and Cabling. Many of the manufacturers have recognized that there is a need to provide raceways running under the work surface and accessible from the top through a variety of types of jacks and plugs, so the user is free to plug in a standard plug, a phone, an Ethernet cable, a laptop, and/or any other type of device, and without bending down to reach under the work surface. The “trough” is large enough to accommodate whatever cabling are needed. This also makes it easier to plug in all those items that need to be recharged periodically (cell phones, Palms, Blackberrries, etc.).

NeatLinks is a very inexpensive, easy-to-install cable management system

Humanscale’s Neatlinks is one of many examples (others are listed above) that offers an easy-to-install solution for routing of cables, power strips and ballasts. These solutions are a good way to clean up workstation clutter.

Seating

There were far too many seating solutions to show here—we will provide an overview to give you an idea of the variety of styles and price-points available. We are organizing the seating trends into three categories: those conducive to collaborating, ergonomic task seating, and stack seating.

Collaborative seating. Even if it were easy to move storage units around or have workstations that facilitate occupants’ speaking with one another, it all is useless if the people can’t easily move their chairs to get into position to do so. It is one thing to have a seat that CAN move (because it has casters), and it is another to have a seat that is designed TO move. We were beginning to see several such chairs.

HG Sideways from izzydesign keeps people comfortable and connected. The 180-degree seat and armrest make for more open, inclusive meeting rooms, encouraging movement and variation. Sideways, which won a Best of NeoCon Gold award for Conference Seating, is a seat that is light and easy to move, even without casters. And because of its design, it is very easy to change one’s position in the chair without having to rotate the chair.

Steelcase’s i2i (pronounced "eye-to-eye") is a comfortable conferencing chair that has some flex, but a lot of support. It too accommodates people’s sitting in the seat in a variety of positions, and also can swivel. It even has a return function so that when someone gets up, it always will face the right direction. This chair is not designed to be one’s primary task seat, and is available with or without wheels.

Steelcase’s cobi won the Best of NeoCon Silver for the Conference category. It is more of a traditional ergonomic task seat, with only a manual adjustment for seat height. It is designed to be easy to move while its weight-activated mechanism provides support by automatically responding to the user’s movement. I would consider this as a straight desk chair as well, as long as one doesn’t need all the bells and whistles that come with some of the high-end task seats.

	The new Sideways conference chair from HAG by izzy provides an open design and comfortable rocking motion.		i2i by Steelcase is a very comfortable conferencing chair.
	cobi is a very-easy-to-move conferencing chair that also works for task seating.

Task seating. We saw a wider variety of ergonomic task seating offerings than ever before. We saw several mid-range chairs that had just the basics that many people will need (the people who never adjust seat-tilt, back tension, etc.), but still want a quality ergonomic chair that allows its height and lumbar support to be adjusted, and even has the new weight-activated controls.

Anyone looking for such a chair needs to try Highmark’s InSync, an intuitive solution. It even is 98% recyclable and made of 21% recycled content.

Allsteel’s Acuity if a fully-featured task seat with a high-design look. It has the weight-activated controls.

FENIX, by Davis Furniture, won the Best of NeoCon Gold for Ergonomic Seating. It is a high-style seat with a mid-back and high-back solution that can work for desk and conference solutions. It has a full set of ergonomic features.

	Highmark says its new InSync line of chairs continually adjusts to the user’s body.		Allsteel is calling its new Acuity seating the "beauty and brains chair" because it combines form and function.
	The new FENIX chair series from Davis offers a sculptural profile and maximum comfort.

Stack Seating. The price ranges for this line have been expanded from under $200 to nearly $1,000, depending on the ergonomic features and high-design style and materials of each stacker.

Haworth’s Very line received two best of NeoCon awards in 2008—a Silver for Conference Seating and a Gold for Stacking. It offers design adaptability and versatility with universally simplistic styling for a sophisticated look that supports broad application.

The Strive Seating Collection from KI is a mid-priced family of seating, including everything from task and conference seating to stackers and stools. The articulating chairs are made out of polypropylene, which is 100% recyclable. 

Other stackers that have an elegant, well-designed look are Mars (from Tayco) and Elios (from Allermuir).

Very Seating, shown here, and Castelli both earned Best of NeoCon awards for Haworth.

KI’s Strive Seating Collection provides innovative "flex-back" seating that emphasizes simplicity, comfort and affordability.

Sustainability

It would be a total shock if any company displaying new products at NeoCon said that they weren’t doing anything to sustain our environment. So now, as companies posture to outdo one another in this critical area, it becomes a matter of how sustainability can be measured. Two very useful measures that many showrooms seemed to endorse were “x% made from recycled materials” and “y% of this product is recyclable.” These statistics get to the bottom line of how a product will conserve our environment.

I also was seeing more companies address directly the concept of “cradle-to-cradle”, meaning that what happens with our resources is not only important during a product’s lifetime, but even afterwards, as its parts get reused and new products are born from the old. This concept affects both designers and facilities managers, as they now become a team, with each trying to work with the other to ensure that the product not only is specified with sustainability characteristics in mind, but that its use and disposal respect the environment as well.

While there is not enough space in this article to discuss the sustainability characteristics of every product at NeoCon, we thought it would be helpful to show you a cross-section of what companies are doing, by using examples not cited in other areas of this story. The examples are divided into several product categories:

Carpet and Flooring

Carpet and flooring represent areas of our work environment that can consume a lot of natural resources, and also have the ability to provide just as satisfactory a solution while consuming very few resources. Here is what several companies are doing, which illustrate not only product but other useful tools and resources.

InterfaceFLOR’s Convert demonstrates a post-consumer carpet tile with a remarkable set of patterns and colors for such content. InterfaceFLOR also makes the point that when one recycles carpet, it is important to recycle both the fiber and the backing, not just one of them. The convert line has a minimum of 32% post-consumer recycled content, and a minimum total recycled content of 65% post-consumer plus post-industrial.

J&J / Invision has introduced ecoScorecard—an Internet-based tool that enables architects, designers and end-users to search, evaluate and document products based on varied environmental parameters. Its built-in algorithm provides a comprehensive accounting of how a specific product contributes to selected sustainability criteria. J&J also introduced a PVC-free backing called eKo. eKo is made of 10% post-consumer recycled content as well as post-industrial materials and is CRI Green Label Plus certified.

Milliken Contract’s Persian Dynasty collection comes with integral cushion backing and optional TractionBack, a high-friction coating that allows the carpet to be installed without adhesives, thus eliminating VOCs and off-gassing. All Milliken’s products are VOC-free and produced with alternative energy.

Shaw Industries collection, Essay of Clues, is a certified cradle-to-cradle product, comprised of two broadlooms and four tiles, each offered in multiple colors. Graphic Nature is completely recyclable, fiber to fiber and backing to backing, and also has cradle-to-cradle certification.

Tandus has introduced Green Samples, a revolutionary virtual sample folder that will minimize the need for physical carpet samples. The patented sampling book contains tear-off pads for each colorway, and each sample folder pad has 25 color-accurate digital images replicating physical carpet samples.

Armstrong’s BioBased Tile uses 10 percent pre-consumer recycled material, diverting waste that would otherwise go to landfills. BioBased Tile is FloorScore certified to California Section 01350 for low VOC emissions and also contributes to LEED credits.

Forbo’s Marmoleum Composition Tile (MCT) is the sustainable alternative to VCT. MCT is 85% organic with 66% bio-based content.

	Convert carpet tile from InterfaceFLOR is made from yarns harvested through the company’s ReEntry 2.0 recycling program.		The Persian Dynasty carpet collection from Milliken Contract was inspired by the ancient empire.
	Shaw’s Graphic Nature is 100% recyclable and has cradle-to-cradle certification.		Tandus says its new sampling system reduces the company’s environmental footprint.
	Forbo says that its Marmoleum Composition Tile carries the most LCA based certifications of any resilient flooring product.

Work Stations

Jofco’s Tahke is a totally green, bamboo case goods system.

Most of the furniture system and case goods companies have products with a sustainability story. Jofco has a very special solution that deserves mention. Its Tahke line is a bamboo case goods product that is completely green. Even the glue is sustainable. Tahke uses a bamboo plywood, which is a no formaldehyde-added product, and offers hardness and durability qualities similar to oak. Then, to make it look good, Jofco brought in well-known designer, Jhane Barnes. Instead of trying to cover up the edges of the bamboo ply, Jofco decided to leave the edges exposed and make them a design detail.

 

Lighting and Heat Gain

The new WhispterTrac from MechoShade integrates with third-party control systems.

While expanding the ways to bring natural daylight to the open office spaces, one also invites the potential for considerable heat gain, especially to spaces facing South and West. And the low sun in the East can make it difficult to see, even if it is too early in the day to be too warm. MechoShade believes that instead of running the air conditioning on max power, it makes more sense to keep the heat out in the first place. Its WhisperTrac family of drapery products offers a complete line of devices designed to keep the light and heat out of spaces, controllable by such devices as timers and photovoltaic cells that sense the light entering the space. By designing the shades so that they can be installed in most types of spaces, they are versatile enough to work in most types of facilities.

 

 

Open Spaces

Cambridge Sound Management’s 3-in-1 system is environmentally friendly, using only 8 watts of power per zone.

With more daylighting coming into spaces, there will be more to cope with than just the potential heat gain. By keeping the height of workstation heights down to 42″, as recommended by LEED, there are bound to be significantly higher noise levels in the office spaces. To this end, NeoCon had several sound masking companies displaying products there: Cambridge Sound Management, Dynasound, Lencore, and LogiSon Acoustic Network are some examples.

Cambridge Sound Management won a Best of NeoCon Gold award for Workplace Technologies for it Qt Pro system, which integrates sound masking, paging and music solutions. It requires only 8 watts of power per zone.

Steelcase, one of many companies to have recognized the need to have work station designs at less than 42″ high, had the foresight to recognize the potential sound problems that may occur in these open spaces, and reached an agreement with Cambridge to distribute its Qt Pro system, thereby integrating technology with its core products. I look for this to be the start of a trend so that the lower panel heights will still yield a functional working environment.

Miscellaneous

Several other products deserve mention, just to show the variety of products that were introduced at this year’s NeoCon:

Herman Miller’s Space Utilization Service uses wireless technology and sensors that temporarily attach to the underside of seating or work surfaces to continuously collect movement data to determine when a seat or desk may be unoccupied. The end result is a space utilization study to help facilities managers see how to maximize the efficient use of their space.

IdeaPaint introduced a paint that transforms any smooth surface into a seamless, high-performance dry-erase writing surface. This is very conducive to making spaces more collaborative, which is one of the major trends from this year’s NeoCon.

Flexible spaces don’t just apply to offices, but to the classrooms as well. The HON Company’s SmartLink Classroom furniture is designed to organize and manage the K-12 classroom with a single product. It creates a very efficient use of space, providing a high degree of flexible close-by storage that doesn’t get in the way of the primary classroom function—teaching.

Any smooth surface can be transformed into a dry-erase writing board with the use of new IdeaPaint

SmartLink offers flexible storage and wall systems that can be customized

Conclusions

NeoCon’08 is just a snapshot of where the furniture and furnishings marketplace is. But it also serves as an yardstick of where we are and where we are going. The furniture solutions are no longer telling us how to work in a space, but are letting us work the way we need to work. Collaboration, temporary spaces and hoteling are in. So the furniture has been designed to accommodate them.

And sustainability has become a way of life. We appear to be at the point where the facilities manager and designer will no longer consider products that don’t have a good track record for use of recycled products and don’t have a good disposability solution. The cradle-to-cradle concept is a very real one.

But what is most extraordinary is how all these solutions work so well to satisfy facilities managers’ and the workers’ needs, while still having a very strong design sense (after all, most NeoCon attendees are designers). In other words, we finally are at a point where we have products that must be seen (prior to purchase) not just by the designers specifying the products, but by the facilities managers who will be overseeing their use. NeoCon is no longer a show for just designers, but one that facilities managers must attend. It then becomes the FMs’ duty to bring back to their companies the insight they’ve gleaned from this comprehensive and trend-setting show.