Knoll, the venerable furnishings maker in East Greenville, has offered up modern design as a path to productivity since 1938. At NeoCon 2012, the just-ended giant trade show in Chicago, Knoll showed off new furniture systems that “recognize the increasingly social, mobile and collaborative fashion of today’s workplace.” In other words, furnishings that support the office as it really exists.
“The office planning paradigm that most of us are familiar with was never intended to support the complexity or unpredictability of new work patterns,” says Benjamin Pardo, Knoll design director.
Knoll’s showroom at NeoCon showcased five kinds of work spaces incorporating “refuge,” for one or two people; “enclave” for three or four; “team meeting” for four to eight and “assembly and community spaces” for larger gatherings.
The idea, says Knoll, is to support a concept of work patterns called “distributed work,” which covers everything from heads-down focused work to formal and informal collaboration to full-on social interaction.
At NeoCon, Knoll featured products that can be configured in myriad ways, including the Toboggan Chair, which allows the user to shift 360 degrees in the seat, and the Big Table a collaborative work setting that can support groups of any size in open plan environments, closed rooms and meeting areas.
Modern design pioneer Florence Knoll founded Knoll in 1938; today the company continues to produce iconic modern designs such as Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair and Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair, along with its lines of ergonomic office systems and furnishings and textiles.
Source: Benjamin Pardo, Knoll
Writer: Elise Vider
