Now here’s an A&D trade show with a difference. Instead of big booths sprawling on a brightly lit show floor, Architect@Work’s layout gangs modules of four booths measuring 10 feet square. The heavy black curtains surrounding the modules and the low ambient light levels lent the affair a languorous “Come wiss me to ze Casbah,” atmosphere. With abundant lounge seating and tables to encourage relaxed, serendipitous meetings, complementary accredited seminars and free food and (after 5 p.m.) booze, what’s not to like?
Architect@Work, an event for architects, interior designers and specifiers, originated in Belgium 15 years ago. Since then it has expanded to 14 European countries. In 2017, it launched in Toronto.
Why Toronto as North American beachhead? We asked Architect@WORK’s Anne-Laure Van de Finste, Exhibition Manager, at the show office at the Enercare Centre in Toronto’s Exhibition Place. “Because of the construction: It’s the city with the highest number of cranes,” she replied, adding that they’re doing their market research on expanding the show to US cities. Yes, Toronto is a boom town, pun intended.
The small booth size forces exhibitors to select only their latest, hottest product for display. Indeed, the show’s philosophy puts an emphasis on innovative products. Exhibitors can’t just pony up and rent space, they must apply to an evaluation panel. Only those with innovative products need apply.
“Even though we’re a European show, we adapt to the national market,” she added. For instance, to buck Toronto’s horrendous rush-hour traffic, show hours were 11 a.m. to 7 pm. In Spain, where nobody sups before 10 pm, the hours are a post-siesta 1 to 9 p.m.; in Scandinavia, 9 to 5.
However, “The layout is always the same aesthetically clean black-and-white, so you don’t know whether you’re in Madrid or Berlin.”
Another distinction: This is not a decorator show. Its mandate, as Linda Kafka, Market and Sales Manager Canada, put it, “Think of a building. Turn it upside down and shake it and whatever falls out wouldn’t be here. Anything affixed to the walls or floors could be here. So, carpet tile would qualify, but not the area rug.”
Nathalie Sandra, Group Exhibition Manager, started the show 15 years ago when a group of architects and interior designers complained. Ms. Van de Finste recalled that they said, “’We’re not visiting trade shows anymore. We’re sick of the sea of sameness. We go to shows and it’s the biggest brands, biggest booths and biggest logos.’ So, we brainstormed and created this concept.”
The mix of exhibitors was split equally between Europeans and Canadians. It spoke volumes that many were here for their third year.
I ran into Ian Chodikoff, former Director of Conference Programming at the largest events company in the world, Informa, which manages Toronto’s Interior Design Show. He said that compared to traditional A&D shows, Architect@work“offers a more intimate atmosphere for people to come and explore the exhibitors’ products and meet them face-to-face. That level of intimacy is the uniqueness of this show.” And, “it gives an opportunity for European manufacturers to dip their toe in the water of the Canadian market and introduce their offerings.”
John Stephensonof Form Architecture Engineering, based in Thunder Bay, Ont., and past president of the Ontario Association of Architects, opined that Architect@workhas “a very focused target audience of architects and interior designers. Because of the focus on innovation, it’s a good fit for the OAA’s message about innovative design approaches.”
Herewith, a look at some of the more memorable booths.
At Object Carpet, architect Merike Bauer, the firm’s Toronto-based Canadian Partner, said, “The exciting news is the transformation of the entire collection to be latex-, PVC [polyvinyl chloride]- and bitumen free. The Places of Origin collection we’re showcasing is made from 100-percent recycled PET [polyethylene terephthalate, as in plastic soda bottles]; they use old fishing nets. We also wash the carpet before it is released.” So, new installations will have no “new carpet” smell with consequent off-gassing of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) such as benzene to cause airway-irritating sick-building syndrome.
The company, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, makes carpet tile as well as area rugs, and their product boasts a vast color range. Indeed, Ms. Bauer explained, “The company owner was a chemist who worked with dyes in the Seventies to come up with really saturated punchy colours. It was a breakthrough because at the time, there was only beige and brown carpet in Germany.”
Formica Canada’s striking, sculptural booth, with its bold shards of interior surfacing material, was impossible to overlook. There, the newest hot product, officially launching later this month, was HardStop Decorative Protection Panels, featuring a fiberglass core (instead of Kraft paper as with Formica’s regular laminate) for superior durability, impact resistance, and Class A fire rating. It doesn’t need to be installed on a substrate, such as particleboard, and can be applied directly to drywall.
“You can use it as is,” said Christelle Locat-Rainville, Canadian Marketing Manager, based in St. Jean sur Richelieu, Que. “We foresee its use in commercial applications such as waiting rooms, where people bang the chairs against the wall.”
Meanwhile, Vivex, Formica’s exterior-cladding product, was presented at the booth of Vivix by Engineered Assemblies, based in Mississauga, Ont., whose Rietveld-chair-colored sample panel was an eye-catcher. Jeff Ker, Senior Technical Advisor, explained, “It’s a phenolic panel that’s dimensionally stable and engineered to handle the diverse conditions of our climate, which is very aggressive, considering the hops over the freeze-thaw line. Toronto can go up and over in 24-hour periods. So, things are expanding and contracting all the time. If they absorb moisture and the moisture freezes, it wants to blow things apart. That’s where this panel comes into play.”
Grant McCracken’s 1990 book Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activitiestakes an anthropological approach to consumer behavior. It recounts that in Renaissance Europe, aristocrats and those aspiring to the rank spent vast sums to acquire furniture with old-looking surfaces because patina—the sheen resulting from age—was a huge status symbol.
Perhaps an atavistic craving for patina helps explain the genesis of the flooring resembling reclaimed wood at the booth of Arbony, based in Flamalle, Belgium. “We produce floors made of new French oak that we oxidize in a fast-forwarding way to make it look authentically old and weathered. French oak is very tannic and allows us to do reactive staining,” said Joanna de Keyser, Arbony’s Export Business Development Manager.
Rather than relying on pigments like traditional stains, reactive stains interact with the tannins, sugars or cellulose in the wood to change the color from within. “The demand for French oak is very high. It’s more beautiful than European or American oak,” she added. Indeed, its rich grain patterns, with their play of shadow and depth, beguile the eye.
On view were samples evoking in diverse beautiful ways what time does to wood: barn boards; chevrons; and Versailles parquet, a pattern of narrow pieces that make a trompe l’oeil basket-weave frame around smaller square pieces.
“We have done the catwalks of Dior and Yves St-Laurent. We’re doing the shop floors of [French fashion house] Balmain around the world with Versailles parquet. It’s very stylish, this aged, reclaimed look.”
Noise-masking open-office environments with white noise –the sound of a waterfall or rushing river—has been around for decades. At Mississauga-based Target by Environmental Acoustics, Senior Account Executive Naveeda Sayyed said, “What makes our technology innovative is our program called Target. It helps tune spaces so that you can achieve the final sound curve more precisely, to get the best-sounding sound-masking system regardless of the construction or function of the space.”
What does “tuning” mean?
“Construction of spaces can vary,” she said. “You can’t just put a speaker in and turn it on. There is an established sound curve that you have to meet to get the best sound output that’s comfortable and provides the best speech privacy and helps control the noise. [That output] is made up of various bands, starting at 80 Herz [low E, the bottom for most bass singers] and going up to 10,000 Hz [about where seniors’ hearing tapers off]. Speech falls within the lower range, but the higher frequencies help with audibility. We can tune to any specification by plus or minus half a decibel. That’s pretty precise.
“The system is commissioned at set-up time, when the space is completely finished construction-wise, when all the furniture and everything that needs to go into the space is in, because an empty room sounds very different.”
“Our system does paging and music as well. It can be zoned. You may need the open area around the cafeteria, for instance, to have elevated levels [of sound masking]. And, the system works at the ear of the listener. It’s not like other acoustic solutions where you treat the space. You’re not putting in acoustic panels.”
Sheer eye candy. That’s what lured your reporter to the booth of Wall Xtreme by LightBlocks, based in Salem, NH. The wall display evoked the matte pastel shades of Post-it Notes and the lemon, lime, orange and clove (purple) flavors of late, lamented Necco Wafers.
“We’re celebrating a seam by creating a bevel and turning that the seam into a design element,” said Mary Boone Wellington, CEO and Chief Inspiration Officer.
“This [primarily acrylic] material is indestructible. You can run luggage carts into it all day long. You can turn middle-schoolers loose on it with Magic Markers or spray paint. It’s half the weight of glass and you can cut it in the field so it’s much easier to install. It’s more flexible than glass, which is good news if you want to cold-form it [to wrap a curving substrate]. It’s in Citibanks throughout America on the fins between the ATMs, and on the Apple sign on the big glass box on [Manhattan’s] Fifth Avenue. We did the outdoor signs for the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, in Dubai: 125 degrees, with sandstorms.
“It’s suitable for every surface except floors. We don’t want you to walk on it because it’s slippery when wet. How do I know? I built a patio out of it. After I fell down about 10 times, I said, ‘Maybe not.’”
For the Newmarket, Ont.-based Edison Lighting Group, Dutch designer Rob van Beek, said Tomas Luknar, Edison’s General Manager, devised “a shape that you can create different patterns with. It’s one of the most unusual luminaires out there. You can have a freestanding unit or eight or 12 together. A unique feature is the magnetic sides: Instead of using hardware, they just connect. Power distribution is plug-and-play. It’s very easy to assemble. You can use it as a pendant or surface-mount it.”
As for the squiggly arc-shaped LEDs, Mr. Luknar explained, “There’s a lot of demand for circles, so we’re coming up with off-cuts or quarters of the large circles.”
Darryl Ainey, the Toronto-based Brand Ambassador for Austria’s Mafi Naturholzboden, uttered the day’s boldest boast. “Mafi is the most organically produced and living floor in the world. For 150 years, it’s been law in Austria that if you’re in the wood business, you need to be 100-percent sustainable. Replace all the trees. Our offcuts and sawdust heat the factory and 25 surrounding buildings. It’s a full closed-loop circle. Our flooring finish is made from lye soap and natural flaxseed oil. It’s completely organic, naturally microbial and solvent-, VOC- and formaldehyde-free. We’re the only flooring in the world to be Red List Free with the Declare label of the Well International Future Living Institute.
“Mafi has an aromatic effect, like a cedar closet, which is an air exchange that filters the room. One of our species, Swiss stone pine, lowers your heart rate; it’s been clinically measured.”
“It’s flood-proof. Our flooring has three layers. Whatever species we put on the top, we put on the bottom,” so it won’t warp when it dries.
Renson Linarte by Ombra Façade showed its new aluminum-cladding exterior wall system. Beate Vüllers, VP of Mississauga-based Door Studio, was point person for the Belgian manufacturer. Standing in front of the display wall, which evoked the fins of a power amplifier’s heat sink, she said, “There are four different shapes plus add-on profiles, including dimmable LED lights and narrow wood strips, giving many options for designers. It’s designed to be used outdoors, but you can use it indoors. The heavy-duty extrusion is made of powder-coated aluminum. We can integrate seamlessly with windows and doors by adding a clip system where you don’t have any visible vertical caulking, so it’s a very clean system. Caulking is the first thing that deteriorates, and it gets nasty-looking.”
The initials in the BG Glass Technologies name stand for Barber Glass, the family firm established in 1883 in Barrie, Ont. We spoke to Christopher Barber, Sales and Marketing Manager, at the firm’s booth about their display of imported Italian glass product.
“There are two lines here: OmniCore, the leading edge of glass-etching, can be etched on one or both sides, in grey or bronze. Our other new line is handmade antique mirror; no two pieces are exactly the same. We’re showing the range of design influence, from wild and whacky to your more subtle traditions.”
Taking a walk on the wild side, Polvere di Stelle, with gold flecks on a purple background, would look exotic in a room with chandeliers, or in a Las Vegas hotel lobby.
At Toronto-based Art for Everyday, Abbas Ghassemi, VP Sales and Marketing, mused that, while their bread-and-butter was kitchen and bath installations, they were at the show to educate architects and designers and encourage them to specify the company’s CNC-milled, solid-wood screens for feature walls, reception desks and the like. The cover of their brochure proclaims, “North America’s manufacturer of premier woodcarvings since 1998.” To judge by the look of their fascinating new textured panel line on display, available in sizes up to 48 by 96 inches, the claim is justified.
Finally, amid the show floor’s predominantly twilight light level, the brightly lit How It’s Made: the Exhibitarea glowed like a beacon. The exhibit, which travels to A&D shows in North America and Europe, features unique, intriguing, new materials from around the world. The presenters were the team from Archello, the Toronto-based specifier website, and Chicago-based materials consultant Jim Salazar.
Improving on previous materials exhibits, How It’s Made shows not just a sample swatch, but also a reference image showing how the material has been used. This provides a sense of context that gives visitors an idea of how to use the material.
“We connect architects with manufacturers,” said Archello CEO Martijn Postmus. “We inspire them for the next project. We do it online with a project guide and we do it at this show with a little curated selection of different materials we think are interesting for architects.”