Being principally an office furniture fair NeoCon doesn't really attract "fringe events" the way home furnishing focussed trade fairs do; office furniture, allegedly, lacking much of the flair, emotion and excitement of its domestic relatives.
In the past however the so-called Guerrilla Truck Show did attempt to provide an alternative, more independent, take on design, than the sanitised corporate vision presented at NeoCon.
Staged during NeoCon week in Chicago's Fulton Market district the Guerrilla Truck Show, as the name implies, allowed selected Chicago design studios to present their work in the back of a truck, a presentation form we will forever associate with the sadly defunct "Made Out Portugal" collective who used such a presentation form at DMY Berlin 2011, and a presentation form of which we thoroughly approve.
Following 2014's tenth anniversary edition the Guerrilla Truck Show organisers' called time on the event; however, for NeoCon 2016 could be persuaded to present a paired down showcase featuring ten design studios in front of the Merchandise Mart Megalith.
And joy of joys they were principally designers. We had feared a lot of felt, a lot of "recycled" bags, a lot of "makers" with their nice-but-lethargic-generic works, a lot of filigree light bulbs posing as design, and a lot of felt. It was however largely designers.
Of which the highlight for us was without question the Ursa light collection by studio McKenzie & Keim.
A freely configurable lamp system Ursa features five connector elements of differing forms and onto which metal rods of a standard and/or custom length are attached and which thus can be shaped into an untold number of forms and configurations. More professional design writers would no doubt refer to the sculptural qualities of the lamps, wax lyrical about the way they reflect natural forms, be that coral, chemicals or galaxies and philosophise over the way the lamps twist and wind through space like their stellar namesake. We'll mention that the light bulb at the end of each rod is a standard two pin LED, a bulb type readily available and thus easily replaceable.
Obviously, and as with Jason Miller's ever genial Modo for Roll and Hill and ever decadent Superordinate Antler for Roll and Hill, we do miss a little that the Ursa system isn't fully modular and reconfigurable, for us that would complete it; that said we were really taken with the reduced character of the variations presented, the lamps on show dominating the space without being arrogant, we really liked the scale of the pieces, the dimensions made sense and created very coherent, logical and accessible objects... and we also liked the fact they are self-produced in Chicago by the designers Taylor McKenzie-Veal and Brendan Keim using local suppliers and local trades.
We imagine you'll have to live in America, or at least have an American standard electricity supply, in order to be able to use the Ursa lamps. But for us simply knowing that they are out there is enough.
More information can be found at: http://mckenzieandkeim.com/
And, and as we're sure you're all aware, Taylor McKenzie-Veal has previously featured in these pages as part of the collective behind the Rhode Island School of Design's Granoff Sofa project......
