Contract Magazine - June/July 2019 - 145

hundreds of new pieces of furniture," he says.
"Most of it we don't need, and much of it will feel
tired in a year or two. It sometimes feels as
if contemporary 'fashion' won the battle with
timeless 'function'-that's a drag."
In designing a new collection of furniture,
functionality and timelessness were key to
Standard Issue. As designers, everything they do
is intended to solve a specific problem for a client.
"We're used to building what we need to build
and Abstracta is great for this," McGinn says. But
selling a product to a consumer meant making
it much easier to work with. The largest challenge
for the designers was in assessing how much
pre-assembly they had to do and how to achieve
their goal of shipping in a flat-pack.
In figuring out how to adapt the Abstracta
system, the designers imposed a few restraints,
the strictest of which was designing to yield
the greatest number of options with the fewest
possible components. One was a proprietary metal
shelf compatible with the system and the other
was a beautiful leveling foot. "We wanted a foot
that confidently anchored the shelves to the floor
and had a heft commensurate and complementary
to the framework," McGinn says. "To paraphrase
another well-known designer, the challenge is in
the details. And with details resolved we turned our
attention to color, finish, and finally packaging."
To figure out how many options to offer
the consumer, they studied furniture archetypes
and even looked at their own everyday lives, asking
themselves, "Where do we use shelves or small
tables in our own houses?" The designers eventually
arrived at 20 solutions, concluding that those were
the forms that they-and other people-needed.
Figuring out the color palette was truly
a collaborative process involving everyone in their
office. "We started with the idea that we would
offer only two neutral colors: black and white,"
McGinn says. "It was all about being minimal
and pure. But we kept wanting something more
and two colors became three, three became four.
We finally settled on six colors ranging from
neutrals to statement colors. They felt right
when they learned that he had used an unidentified for today and tomorrow."
The designers at Standard Issue are
display system and they thought it would be
big believers in function, simplicity, and quality
interesting to replicate the look.
materials and manufacturing. "One of the criteria
"In 2017, we approached architect Roger
for Stille was that it be timeless-no gratuitous
Lepley who owned Consort with a proposal that
flourishes, and no non-essential features," McGinn
we collaborate to develop a suite of ready-made
says. "I think we succeeded. We'll know when we
products built using Abstracta with the addition
see Stille happily filled 20 or 30 years from now."
of some new, custom elements," McGinn says.
"He understood what we were trying to do and has
been an enthusiastic supporter through the years."
McGinn was well aware that we don't just
need yet another piece of useless, trendy furniture
on the market. "Our culture is awash in things.
Every year in Milan, and then New York, we see
contract
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