During this year’s NeoCon, the largest contract furniture trade show held in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) introduced Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Pilot Credit 43, which applies to all Building Design and Construction, Interior Design and Construction LEED rating systems.

The pilot credit supports LEED’s objective of encouraging building owners and facility managers to implement measurable green building goals as these relate to maintenance and furnishings, specifically. LEED Pilot Credit 43 promotes the use of non-structural products, with known life cycles in LEED buildings, in order to set the foundation for continuous improvement. Also, for the first time, the USGBC recognized several third-party certifiers, which validate the sustainable attributes proclaimed by manufacturers about their products. Many of the methods of earning LEED Pilot Credit 43 revolve around the use of third-party certification.

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A curving bench dominates the pocket park next to the Chicago Temple, at the corner of Washington and Clark. The first time I walked by it, I realized that this piece of furniture is a masterpiece, psychologically speaking.

Research tells us that we flourish in places where we feel in control, and this bench provides all sorts of options.  I’ve seen people arrange themselves along its length when they want to make eye contact with others OR NOT, knowing, instinctively that connections can happen when we catch each others’ eyes. These eye-links can read minds. For introverts, though, continuous contact can be unpleasant; and even the most extroverted of us needs a little alone time once in a while. But no matter what your preferred “interaction alignment”, you can sit at some point along the bench and experience it. Read more…

Photo: Paul Clemence.

A chair could change a century and perhaps a planet. It will have to, eventually, but the greening of the home-furnishings industry is taking longer than we hoped for. Though we see evidence of one or two singular aspects of sustainability, systems-thinking is harder to find when it comes to residential furniture design and manufacturing.

Asked for an honest assessment of the “State of Green and Sustainability” at New York trade show, ICFF, (International Contemporary Furniture Fair), we traipsed through three very-cool satellite showrooms, one high-end showroom, and the whole ICFF show floor (at the Javits Center) before we finally heard smart talk from a visionary manufacturer. Someone is doing their homework and we loved hearing words like “biocide release, change of custody in the supply chain and resource conservation.” But much more homework needs to be done throughout the industry. Herewith is our first Report Card and highlights of the green and sustainable trends from ICFF 2011 as well as galleries, shops, and showrooms around New York City. Read more…

The 100 Mile Challenge, by students from the Maryland Institute College of Art and the University of Washington.

The student exhibits at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair stand out by default. On a floor filled with big-name businesses, emerging designers, and suppliers, you can tell the school teams not by the signage, but by the extremely enthusiastic young talent waiting to tell you exactly how this idea came about, or how they built that. Eight Schools exhibits were selected to be part of ICFF 2011: Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)/ University of Washington, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt, Philadelphia University/Sane Jose State University/University of Lincoln, University of Oregon, and The University of Tokyo. In addition, Metropolis’s booth this year was designed by students from Parsons The New School for Design.

The most idealistic exhibit, certainly, was the 100 Mile Challenge, a joint effort by students from Baltimore’s MICA Environmental Design department and students from the industrial design program at the University of Washington in Seattle. Read more…

Designers always talk about being open at the start of projects, entering into the process without preconceived ideas or forms. They claim that their brains are sticky blank slates awaiting any and all good ideas. Today it’s fashionable to claim that you wouldn’t dare even begin sketching a form, however provisional (even on a cocktail napkin like Frank Gehry), without first exhausting all avenues of research. “It’s about looking at the problem with a sort of child-like wonder,” they might say about the precious formulation of their ideas. “It’s about not being afraid to ask the dumb question.” And you think: so why do your buildings (or chairs or books) always look the same? Is it just a coincidence that all your dumb questions lead to roughly the same result? Read more…

When forecasting the trends we’d see at Salone, we imagined that designers would invent new ways to maximize space, and that portability and adaptive re-use would be seen everywhere. But we encountered one surprising trend: designers weaving new concepts utilizing the abstractions of Space, Place and Time. Here’s what we saw at the SaloneSatellite, featuring 700 young designers, 20 international design schools, an exhibition whose theme was “50+50 Projects- Designing the Future.”

SPACE MAPPING

gt_t2P, Parametric Design and Digital Fabrication Studio, based in Chile, creates a design “DNA” through digital crafting of “generative algorithms.” Their objective is to arrive at a custom template that can move from objects to buildings for efficiency, as well as the creation of a kind of natural mapping of form by topographical waves. Read more…

Grace Designs: Memphis showroom designed by Sottsass Associati. World Trade Center, Dallas, TX, 1984.

Rumor has it that the short-lived design movement, Memphis, got its name as group of designers sat around late one evening in Milan with their leader, Ettore Sottsass Jr., while American music played on the radio. The story goes that Bob Dylan was singing “Oh, Mama, can this really be the end /To be stuck inside of Mobile/ With the Memphis blues again.”  With its pop-culture roots, it’s not surprising that some of Memphis’s most memorable products, plastic laminates, have become the favorite surfacing material of “fast food restaurants and cheesy nightclubs,” as Belinda Lanks writes in our March 2011 issue.

Abet Laminati’s Memphis tabletops in Big Daddy’s, New York. Read more here.

Knowing that Lorry Dudley, who now runs the U.S. warehouse and distribution center for such great European brands as Moroso, Kasthall, and Droog while consulting with international manufacturers and museums, was personally involved in spreading the word about Memphis in the U.S.A., I could not resist asking her remember the time when the colorful furnishings with their wild shapes first appeared in North America. Here are some of her recollections of a transformative time, nearly three decades ago. Read more…

Late last month I had the pleasure of joining three amazing women on a jury for the One Good Chair competition in Las Vegas. While it’s always confounding to talk about sustainability in windowless convention facilities, in a city that’s a manifestation of the monstrous hybrid concept writ large, we were delighted to see green moves on a small scale. My fellow jurors and I were pleased to review the five finalists in the competition and learn how young designers from all over the world are thinking about materials, packaging, ergonomics, and more.

Run by the Las Vegas Market and supported by the Sustainable Furnishings Council (SFC), (Metropolis is a media sponsor), the competition is the brainchild of architect Lance Hosey who hatched the idea three years ago. Read more…

Some design concepts never stop making sense. Elephants are always an extraordinarily good fit for children’s products – they are large, kind-hearted creatures, with just the right eccentric features to make them instantly loveable. And for Indian and Nepali children, elephants are omnipresent in their mythology and folktales, where they have a much deeper cultural significance, not just as playful companions but also as models of good behavior.

So Stephen Pennington seems to have hit upon just the right idea for his Elephant Walk Desk, a classroom furniture solution that has just been selected as a finalist in the INDEX: Design Challenge 2010.  Read more…

Ironically, classrooms often receive the least design attention in institutions of higher education. As Peter Hall pointed out in our June 2010 issue, funds from donors go towards building more glamorous spaces like galleries, high-tech research labs, even libraries. Yet the space where students spend most of their time is the old, regimented, sleep-inducing common classroom.

In working to redesign college classrooms around the country, the furniture manufacturer Steelcase had to first understand that classrooms had to change because students have changed. In the age of the online social network, students are more inclined to collaborative learning. They are taking charge in the classroom, driving the education process through discussion and teamwork, rather than being passive listeners. One of the things holding them back is the outmoded space that encourages outmoded classroom practices.

Steelcase’s experiences at the Stanford d.school take me back to my own design school days, where every semester was a struggle with studio furniture. Read more…