The 2024 edition of Orgatec Cologne, Europe's, possibly the world's, largest trade fair for office furniture and office design is being staged under the banner "New Visions of Work". And as that 2024 edition, and its new visions, approaches a report is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology that should provide for some animated discussions at the event: Standing to work at a desk may not be as good for you as you may have been told. And could even be problematic. But there is
read more
The Room for Focussed Activity, as seen at The Biophilic Workspace, Technische Universität München, Munich Creative Business Week 2024 For all that the office is popularly considered an 'environment', over a great man decades it was essentially a monoculture in terms of flora and fauna: humans were there, but little else. Save that half-dried out Yucca sp. or Philodendron sp. in the shadiest corner of the office. Or sat on the sunniest window still. Objects that have not only accompanied the
read more
Vitra A Fehlbaum; A Campus; A Commonwealth According to the Sagas of the Dolls of Wood, that most authoritative account of the early (hi)story of the Commonwealth of Vitra, the contemporary Vitronians trace their origins back to a joining of forces of the Graeter, a Basel based people whose primary trade was the creation of display systems for shops and shop windows, and the Birsfelden Fehlbaum, a primarily office based people at that time under the guidance of a Willi and an Erika; a Willi
read more
"For men who have to write a lot, and over prolonged periods, a desk at which they can work standing up is an indispensable piece of furniture for altering their posture and for maintaining their health", opined Journal der Moden in May 1786. An age when, famously, only men wrote. Yet advantageous and positive as standing to write was, prolonged standing could, as Journal der Moden notes, lead to tiredness. A solution was however at hand for all who preferred working at a standing height desk
read more
Back in the year 1 BCE, Before Corona Epidemic, we developed a plan to use 2020 to tour through contemporary office design, a tour to be undertaken both physically and theoretically. A very simple plan developed in the knowledge that in October the Orgatec office furniture fair would be staged in Cologne, and that such a tour would, hopefully, allow us to approach Orgatec 2020 from differentiated and manifold perspectives. And a simple plan, which, and as with all simple plans, proved more
read more
At Orgatec Cologne 2016 Vitra staged, in effect, their own trade fair, renting an entire hall and inviting family and friends along to share the space and their ideas on the future of work. And obviously had a lot of fun and/or success with the concept. For at Orgatec Cologne 2018 they once again staged the Vitra Fair....... Work Vitra - Work, Orgatec Cologne 2018 Back in our post from the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot's exhibition Ron Arad: Yes to the Uncommon! we hinted that if Vitra
read more
It's probably no exaggeration to claim that musicians have at best an ambivalent, truculent, openly confrontational relationship with the office. When not writing about being in love, not being in love, wanting to be in love, wanting to not be in love, etc, they can be found pouring scorn and ridicule on those who dutifully waste their days in offices when there is all that freedom to be enjoyed. Thus one could imagine songs about office furniture being about as rare as occasions when Caílte
read more
When we spoke with Vitra's Chief Sales Officer Josef Kaiser at NeoCon Chicago he told us that at "Orgatec 2016 we will be trying to be more interesting for architects, without losing the focus on the dealers, which will be challenge, but one we’re looking forward to, not least because this year we have our own hall" What that meant in practice could be experienced in Hall 5.2 at Cologne Messe. Or in the Vitra Messe - Vitra Trade Fair - as we've taking to calling it, seeing how it was,
read more
"The fact that you are European allows you to be quirky. Europe has a great reputation for good design but that is just the ante to the game, and allows you then to be interesting, but you also have execute." BuzziJungle by Jonas Van Put for BuzziSpace, as seen at NeoCon Chicago 2016 Established in 2007 as a producer of office acoustic solutions, the Belgian manufacturer BuzziSpace has quickly grown to become not only one of the major producers of acoustic products but of what one could
read more
Although geographically the (hi)story of Vitra begins in Basel, spiritually it begins in America and arrives in Switzerland in 1957 with the licences to produce works by US designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Girard; and then grows over the subsequent decades under the influence of the close co-operations which thus developed, for all those with George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames. Given this close affinity with and to America it was perhaps
read more
As we noted in a previous post, spending long periods sitting can result in shorter telomeres and thus a greater susceptibility to health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A new study by researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health would appear to indicate that in addition to health benefits, regularly standing while working in an office environment can also increase productivity. Based on data collected over a period of six months from
read more
As we have often noted in these pages, a combination of increasing automation, advancing technology, the changing nature of industry and commerce and the associated evolution of the term "office work" will increasingly enforce changes in office furniture design. And we're not being particularly clever or perceptive when we say such, its simply how the process works, how office furniture design has always progressed: be it the evolution of the office chair in the 19th century as ever more
read more
We recently posted on current research which suggests that not only is sitting for long periods detrimental to our health, but that sport and movement cannot compensate for the negative effects of prolonged sitting. Taking such research as their starting point Amsterdam based architecture/philosophy studio Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances, RAAAF, and artist Barbara Visser created the somewhat polemically titled animation "Sitting Kills" from which they have now developed the installation
read more
If you visit the Bussalp restaurant above the Swiss resort town of Grindelwald you can experience a curious, inconspicuous, almost underwhelming, piece of furniture design history. USM window fittings. Just don't expect steel tubing and chrome plated brass balls, that all came much, much later...... The story of the USM Haller modular furniture system starts in 1885 in the Swiss village of Münsingen with the establishment of a locksmith and ironmonger business by Ulrich Schärer, a
read more
Among the more memorable moments in our long, if troublesome, tenure at and of (smow)blog is the day we took possession of our new 1m x 2m USM Haller table. Less on account of the object and more on account of the looks of fear and trepidation that crossed the faces of those forced to share an office space with us. "Given the chaos created on their Eiermann Table", their pained expressions screamed, "what will they achieve with 2 sqm of finest Swiss fabrication?" The answer was as swift as
read more
System USM Haller is a storage and display system for all. We know that most people only come across USM Haller units in lawyers and accountants offices, doctors surgeries or museums ... but that is, if you will, a historical relic based on the traditional distribution system. The times my have changed but system USM Haller remains the reliable, versatile and practical system it has always been. Many new customers, however, have a problem understanding what is and is not possible with USM
read more
We at (smow)blog we have often mentioned Vitras Net'n'Nest office design concept - one the one hand because we like it and on the other because as an official Vitra partner we at smow like to draw attention to new developments and products from Vitra. We have, however, never made a secret of the fact that one can - if one wants - mix and match furniture from various producers. Which was pretty much our third thought upon seeing Adenike by Heidelberg based designer Bao-Nghi Droste at DMY
read more
In a recent article wired magazine presented their own take on the evolution of office furnishing. From the introduction of the vast, cattle-shed like offices that characterised early office design through the cubicles and "virtual offices" of the 1980s and 90s and onwards the text makes one thing clear: Too many office workers have suffered through bad office design concepts. But one needn't work from home in order to benefit from the advantages of a convivial and stimulating office
read more
For the creative bosses at Vitra the days of the large unified office space are numbered. Not only are the working conditions in such environments not ideal for productivity, but much more each employee and every visitor has a feeling of surveillance, exploitation and treadmill. A more inspiring and positive atmosphere, however, promise Vitra from their playfully named "Net 'n' Nest" concept. Here the connection between individual work and rest areas and the possibilities of communicative
read more
