Contract - July/August 2016 - 48

BEST OF N EOCON® 2016

Best of Competition

An interview with Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd
of PearsonLloyd, the designers of Zones for Teknion
is no longer a single industry view of what is the best
workplace. This lack of certainty is a great environment
for challenging the previous norms and developing
new ideas. Also, how and where workplace furniture
is used is diverging away from offices and into retail,
higher education, hospitality, and new sectors, such
as coworking and coliving spaces.

Tom Lloyd (left) and Luke Pearson

The Zones workplace furniture collection by Teknion,
designed in partnership with London-based
PearsonLloyd, was named the 2016 Best of NeoCon
Best of Competition. Zones includes seating, tables,
screens, and easels, all of which can be arranged
in a multitude of ways. Seating options are a club
chair in two models, a gently curved armchair,
a lounge chair with a slight angular recline, a stool
with a wood or upholstered seat, and a bench with
a solid-beech frame and beech plywood back. Tables,
with soft edges and turned wood legs, are available
in a variety of sizes and shapes. Also, Zones features
a series of compact, semiprivate work enclosures,
or pods, that help to diffuse sound and provide
a sheltered place to work or have a discussion.
Contract interviewed Luke Pearson and
Tom Lloyd about this award-winning collection.
Describe the research that led to Zones. How long
did it take? What research into working did you
conduct or review?
We started our collaboration with Teknion in autumn
2014. The first six months were almost entirely research,
looking at the major trends influencing contemporary
life, including technology, emerging markets, new service
models and demographics, sustainability, and wellbeing. These themes range beyond just the world of
work, and the research was intentionally focused outside
the potentially narrow field of vision within the industry.
What conclusions did you come to?
Alongside those mega-themes, we developed a point
of view around the needs of the workplace now, where
we think it might be heading, and why. One of the most
interesting conclusions that we have drawn is that there
48

How did you implement the research as
a differentiator in the design process?
The use of research and knowledge regarding work,
workspace, and new work styles is no longer restricted
to the biggest or strongest brands in the sector, and
there is a surprisingly common narrative emerging from
all corners of the market that discusses such issues
as collaboration, millennials, hospitality, the need for
silence, or wellness. The biggest challenge is finding a
creative response that stitches these widely understood
themes together and is grounded in understanding
utility, beauty, and accessibility to the market.

that could be applied across a large range of pieces.
The resulting visual cohesion allows different parts
of the collection to be curated together in a seamless
manner, without having to create a single visual
aesthetic. The language of the system is neither
"shouty" nor too mechanical.
Understanding the emergence of hospitality
as an industry theme, we do not think most companies
want their employees to work in a faux-hotel
environment. Finding the right mix of professionalism
and humanity was key to the success of the collection.

Many furniture companies have introduced
collections for the casual, collaborative office.
How does Zones stand out from other collections
on the market?
Zones is characterized by balance. It is a balance of
work settings, styles, and postures, as well as a balance
between craft and technology, between efficiency and
warmth, between the new and the familiar. The design
and feel of the collection is, in part, down to our DNA,
our interests, and our design philosophy. The collection
is knowledge driven, with the full range in terms of choice
of settings, postures, ergonomics, and materiality-
merging the cultures of work and home.
What details do you consider unique to Zones?
There is less focus on upholstery- and textile-based
What is the importance of beechwood in Zones?
solutions in the Zones collection as compared with
The emergence of wood in the contract market in recent
many other solutions. There seems to be a contradiction years is clear to see. As a material, wood has moved
in the industry between searching for maximum sound
from casegood production to being seen in direct
absorption for spaces that, by definition, can never
relation to tooled componentry on chairs and tables.
be acoustically secure. In our view, too much sound
In Zones, we were very interested in the mix between
absorption can also create an uncomfortably deadening the craft of wood and the technology of tooled
sensation, which does not promote well-being.
aluminum and plastic parts. In this case, we have sought
to maximize the potential of wood as an engineering
Regarding the design and construction of the
material as well as something that brings warmth and
collection, Zones has a simplicity and elegance that
humanity to the workplace. Beech has a long heritage
is consistent throughout. How did you achieve that? in the furniture industry and has great functional
We were looking for a limited number of themes-
and aesthetic qualities. Using traditional lamination
including materiality, color, form, and construction-
techniques in the Zones collection elevates the material
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Contract - July/August 2016

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