This is the 5th annual Most Excellent Awards for NeoCon. It is a transition year, reflecting the changes at officeinsight. This award program was instituted to select the “Best of the Best” by jurors from all sectors of the office industry. There are many awards given yearly, and at NeoCon, and these awards have their place. But Most Excellent Award recognition signifies that the product (or showroom, or person) has achieved something beyond good, or very good, or novel, or particularly useful. It has transcended the point of “good features” and the whole has emerged as a striking example of the many facets of excellence in the office industry.
While usually the Most Excellent Awards are presented for products and showrooms (large and small), this year there is only a single recipient: the Herman Miller Resolve Showroom. It would be an error to attempt to divine where the high achievement of this presentation is attributable to excellent space design, on the one hand, or the innovative design of the Resolve system, on the other. Rather, it is the whole which is celebrated this year and, in the end, it is this combination of fine product design, as incorporated into the workspace, which is the object of all of efforts in office design.
Resolve was introduced on a limited basis at NeoCon 1999 and took the Most Excellent Product Award last year. Designed by industrial designer Ayse Birsel, this office system without panels was immediately recognized as a breakthrough system. Resolve stepped out this year, fully developed and completely operational. Herman Miller received $2 million in orders the first day the system became available, and current sales are already exceeding third year projections.
For NeoCon this year, the system was set appropriately in a coolly elegant, minimal showroom whose surreal, white interior and state-of-the-art electronic gear invested the space with an atmosphere, at once futuristic and seductive. Particularly arresting was the 3-dimensional ceiling with suspended metal fins tracing complex curves throughout the space, designs made possible only by CADD technology. The display, with its liberal use of glass and theatrical lighting, served as an impressive fulfillment of the promise seen in Ms. Birsel’s radical design concept of a hexagonally planned office system. The showroom also won the Grand Award in the annual Showroom Design Competition sponsored by the International Interior Design Association and Interiors magazine. The showroom was designed by The Environments Group (Robert Nassar, consultant, and Joyce Mast, graphic design) and Krueck & Sexton. Herman Miller Vice President Rick Duffy oversaw the overall design and installation.
From officeinsightTM
