Contract - October 2010 - (Page 36)

focus a new conversation Coalesse has something to talk about with the SW_1 conference furniture collection By Jennifer Busch Several years ago, the legacy Steelcase Design Partnership companies Metro, Brayton, and Vecta merged to form Coalesse, a seemingly uneasy partnership that deﬁed exact explanation given the broad diﬀerences in product lines, but promised to address the segment of the market where work and life intersect along blur lines. And despite each company’s tradition for excellent design, it was clear that Coalesse needed something big of its “own” to deﬁne the brand. This past NeoCon®, it delivered on that promise with the introduction of the SW_1 Collection of conference furniture, designed by Scott Wilson of Chicago-based MINIMAL. Wilson, an alum of design-driven companies like IDEO and Nike, and techdriven companies like Motorola, had never designed oﬃce furniture before, but his career on the periphe of designing for the workplace provided just enough insight and just enough inexperience to give him an informed yet open-minded perspective on the assignment. Armed with a fresh eye, some Coalesse market research on the evolution of meetings in the workplace, and his own observations about what makes meetings productive (or not), Wilson ﬂopped the relationship between the typical conference furniture pieces—tables and chairs—and thus changed their attitude from formal and hierarchical to casual, egalitarian, and collaborative. “Today there is a lot of pressure on people to deliver innovation,” notes Wilson. “We have to put them in a comfortable mind-set.” Robert Arko, vice president and creative director of Coalesse, explains that from the outset, “We knew the collection would include some kind of a hybrid between a lounge chair and a conference chair, and we knew a table would be involved.” Beyond that, Arko trusted Wilson’s insights and ideas on exactly how those pieces would manifest themselves. “There is nothing more generic than a conference room, and we needed to move away from generic,” he says. “The collaboration segment is where people come together for meetings that are more strategic, more about knowledge creation. SW_1 delivers a ve relevant solution. We subtly retuned the roles of the pieces so that the furniture is quite novel in the behavior it supports. It is meaningfully related to user needs.” Technically, SW_1 is a low conference setting that represents a live/work alternative to the generic conference room. The collection consists of a work/lounge chair in medium- and high-back versions, a conventionalheight conference chair available on glides or casters, a low conference table in multiple sizes, and a conventional-height conference table in va ing lengths. A tablet accesso is available for the work/lounge chair, and Power Pod, a design-conscious, portable power source, addresses Coalesse’s belief that a majority of meetings now take place in wireless environments that need only support power. The chairs in the collection are deﬁned by a casual aesthetic that combines a mesh 3-D knit back for ergonomic support with an upholstered seat and frame. Diﬀerent conﬁgurations, materials, and ﬁnishes give the user a broad range of applications. But, “The really important meetings are the creative ones, where all these connections start happening,” says Wilson. “This collection is mostly about sitting back and being conversational.” According to Arko, Coalesse believes the future of the oﬃce is heavily weighted toward the kinds of collaborative and social spaces that SW_1 supports. “Converting that insight into a hypothesis is a particular kind of design work that is not fashion,” he says. “It’s design thinking at its ﬁnest. That conversion is where we want to be as a brand.” Reader Service No. 201 36 contract october 2010 www.contractdesign.com http://www.contractdesign.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - October 2010

Contract - October 2010
Contents
Editor's Note
Industry
Resources
Focus: What's Next
Focus: A New Conversation
Materials: Cork and Circumstances
Green: Net Zero
Practice: The Office That Never Closes
Splashy and Sustainable
The Art of Healthcare Design
Best Foot Forward
Harmonious and Healthy
Of Sea and Stone
Live Long and Prosper
Trends: From Illness Care to Wellness Care
Process: On the Front Line
Designers Rate
Sources
Ad Index
Perspectives

Contract - October 2010