The reason a home writer hikes across five block-size floors of showrooms and exhibits at The Merchandise Mart every June, in company with 50,000 other sets of pained feet, is simple: It’s NeoCon.
It is this country’s premier trade show for commercial furnishings destined for offices, restaurants, airports, hotels and other public spaces.
And again, the reason a home writer goes is simple: Amid all the ergonomic office chairs and computer desks is good stuff for people at home too.
Contract furniture has softened up considerably over the years, making certain sofas, chairs and tables not only suitable, but beautiful for the homefront — for reasons beyond the aesthetic. Because it must meet various safety and resistance codes and standards, contract furniture is made with a degree of research and development and durability that is unheard of in regular home furnishings.
The 35th annual NeoCon officially opens Monday, but we offer up this preview of five interesting pieces. The three-day show is not open to the public, but all of these products are accessible.
Mirra work chair from Herman Miller
A phenomenon like the Aeron chair, which has been the gold standard in comfortable office seating since Herman Miller introduced this blockbuster in 1994, is not an easy legacy. How does a company top that?
Herman Miller is attempting a parallel feat — not to outdo, it is quick to note — of seating glory with the introduction of Mirra, a highly technical performance chair that is designed to hit a midlevel price point.
Mirra takes a one-size-fits-all approach to seating that is possible through “the power of geometry,” explains Claudia Plikat, one of the five designers and engineers at Studio 7.5 in Berlin, who worked with the Zeeland, Mich.-based Herman Miller by videoconferencing across 5,000 miles and seven time zones to produce this chair.
Among Mirra’s key features is its TriFlex back, which is engineered to adjust automatically to a sitter’s body shape to provide the proper support from the lower sacral area of the spine, up through the lumbar and into the upper thoracic region. That backrest is made of a high-grade, molded (and quite flexible) plastic that is pierced with holes — for reasons other than decoration. The size of those holes determines flex and movement — the larger slats being in the lumbar region where body geometries differ most and, therefore, flexibility is needed.
Another key feature: the curling front edge of the chair. It is Studio 7.5’s technological answer to the sliding seat pan, which is the typical adjustment for seating depth — but often leaves shorter people with a gap between the seat and the back of the chair and, thus, no back support. This new mechanism allows for a 2-inch depth adjustment at the front edge, keeping all sitters in contact with the backrest.
Like Aeron, Mirra’s seat does not have a foam-and-fabric construction. Instead, it is made of a suspension fabric (a breathable meshlike material) that gives a built-in support.
And, finally, an ingenious tilt mechanism gives Mirra an easy recline — even for sitters weighing as little as 100 pounds, who, in most chairs, have to push to get a chair to recline.
Mirra costs $649, fully loaded with a number of options. It will be available this week. To find the nearest Herman Miller dealer, call 800-646-4400 or visit www.hmhome.com.
WindowLACE cq roller shades and panel glides by Chilewich
Besides their elegant gossamer patterns, the beauty of these roller shades and room dividers from New York-based Chilewich is that they’re made of a woven vinyl that can be hand-washed with a soft brush or sponge. To do them so modernly — with impeccable hardware and mechanisms — Chilewich teamed up with Silent Gliss USA, a Loganville, Ga.-based window-treatment fabricator that is known for such things.
WindowLACE comes in three weave patterns and as many as five colors; it’s available on a custom-order basis through The Terence Conran Shop in New York, 866-755-9079. Some prices: A roller shade 36 inches wide by 54 inches long costs $346. A multipanel room dividing system, 120 inches wide by 84 inches high, costs $1,131.
Cavea side table by Gary Lee Partners for Cumberland Furniture
The arc on the metal ribbons that connect the top metal ring with the bottom one on this handsome table is important. That arc comes in either a convex or concave (which is shown) form, so that the former table can nestle atop the latter.
The Chicago interiors/design firm of Gary Lee Partners designed Cavea for Cumberland Furniture as a modern interpretation of the traditional nesting table. Once a prestigious Grand Rapids, Mich.-based furniture company, Cumberland is in its second year of a strong comeback effort, marked by the hiring of Gary Lee to come up with a broad new collection of designs.
Cavea’s top comes in marble, granite and limestone, in addition to the glass that is shown. It costs about $1,300 (depending on size and materials) and is available through the trade. Call Coyne Associates in Chicago at 312-222-1070.
Tech trak from Tech Lighting at Lightology
Lightology, a lighting emporium in River North, is making a significant introduction with Tech trak, a new track lighting system that adds more flexibility and brighter light to the proposition.
The track on this system is a flat rail of aluminum that can be hand-bent to follow the architectural contours of a ceiling. A typical track system is restricted to a straight line.
And, unlike typical rail systems (which are low-voltage), this one is 120-volt, which is standard line voltage and means no bulky transformer is needed.
It also means that bigger light can be achieved. Brighter pendant lamps and fixed heads using typical incandescent bulbs (instead of the low-voltage halogen bulbs) can be hung from the Tech trak rail. But all those delicate low-voltage fixtures that people have come to love about rail systems are not moot with the higher-voltage Tech trak. By adding small transformer-adaptors to the rail, the low-voltage fixtures still can be used.
The bottom line: Tech trak makes it possible to have a sinuous rail snaking across the ceiling in a large room and accomplishing several lighting goals at the same time. Bright spotlights can be hung from one part of the track to highlight artwork on the wall. And then farther down the track, low-voltage pendants could be dropped over a kitchen countertop, for instance, where less brilliance would be needed.
Tech trak will be available at the end of July at Lightology, 215 W. Chicago Ave., 312-944-1000, or visit www.lightology.com. Some prices: A basic kit including an 8-foot section of rail with three fixed heads costs about $800; add two pendant lamps to that and it costs about $1,100.
Graffiti Camo fabric by Stephen Sprouse for KnollTextiles
“It was a very alternative way of getting design imagery — and it’s beautiful,” says Suzanne Tick, creative director for KnollTextiles, in referring to Digital Airwave and Static Screen, two new drapery fabrics being launched at NeoCon. The “ethereal” designs are actually random static patterns from a blank TV screen that were captured by digital camera, then “printed onto heat-transfer paper and then transferred onto the fabric,” Tick explains.
The alternative mind behind all that was famed New York graffiti artist Stephen Sprouse, who collaborated with KnollTextiles on a collection of printed fabrics that are really out there. (Prints, alone, are counterintuitive for the very modern Knoll, which hasn’t done one since the 1980s.)
Even more alternative is Sprouse’s Graffiti Camo fabric (which is shown) that works for both upholstery and draperies. Sprouse, whose streetness has adorned Louis Vuitton handbags among other accouterments of high-fashion, scrawled the Declaration of Independence across a camouflage background, which is then printed on Knoll’s Extreme Velvet. The velvet is made of woven Trevira CS, a fire-resistant polyester that wears like iron.
Graffiti Camo costs $45 a yard and will be available this fall at Knoll, The Merchandise Mart, Suite 1111, Kinzie and Wells Streets, 312-454-6920. Same for Digital Airwave and Static Screen, which cost $59 a yard.
For those who would like to see how Sprouse’s passionate expressions in fabric actually translate to a room setting, Knoll is upholstering some of the walls in its Mart showroom with Graffiti Camo — in a Day-Glo colorway, no less. And several of KnollStudio’s classic Modern furniture pieces from Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe will be covered with Sprouse’s handiwork — some of them in fabric from the new collection, others were specially “tagged” by Sprouse for the NeoCon launch. (That display will continue after NeoCon closes Wednesday, which would be a better time for the public to pay a visit to the Knoll showroom).
