At Orgatec 2016

 

From October 25th to 29th at Orgatec in Cologne, Germany, 665 companies from 40 countries presented their newest products and best interpretations of how to respond to the current trends in workplace design. The event organizers were expecting about 50,000 people to attend the show, and judging from the crowds on Thursday (my last day and the show’s third day of five), I’d say 50,000 was easily within reach.

The conventional wisdom as to why Orgatec is important for North Americans to attend has always been something like, “We go to Orgatec to see the trends in Europe because we know we’ll be seeing those things here in a few years.” As with much conventional wisdom, it no longer applies.

There have been and still are significant cultural differences between the way we work on this side of the Atlantic and that side. But at this Orgatec, there was significant evidence that the trends are now starting over here and migrating that way. With the exception of designing for sustainability, where Europeans are still way ahead, the big trends in planning workspaces have started here.

The idea of making the office more residential in feel and softer in function was clearly being adopted in a big way by exhibitors. So too was the idea that serendipitous meetings and casual interchanges can improve employee engagement and foster corporate innovation. Coworking was sometimes being interpreted in rather odd ways, such as the stand that was labeled, “ The Smart cowork lobby” but appeared to be nothing more than a café-type space.

A number of stands featured live plants and made the case that a healthier office and employee wellbeing can be enhanced if not fully achieved by introducing some carbon dioxide using and oxygen emitting living things

Orgatec wouldn’t be Orgatec without buildings full of new and old chairs of every stripe. Some exhibitors took advantage of the high ceilings and went up – with walls of chairs rather than choosing the more expensive route of renting more square footage. I couldn’t help thinking of the old chair-maker’s saying: “The world doesn’t need another chair – but we do.”

And tables too, thousands of tables with every imaginable surface material and bases ranging from concrete to carbon fiber. There were folding and non-folding tables with and without acoustic panels attached. Some had elegant solutions for attaching screens and some had hardware-store quality L-brackets. Desking solutions were in evidence everywhere, and as if tacitly acknowledging that desking solutions generally create acoustic issues, there were tons of companies displaying acoustic and space dividing products.

The most obvious takeaway if you step back and try for a high level overview is that ancillary furniture is no longer ancillary. The replacement of miles and miles of systems furniture with acres and acres of soft seating, occasional tables and little private areas is hard to miss.

Given the overwhelming number of exhibitors and seemingly endless rows of stands, I tried to concentrate on the brands that are familiar to officeinsight readers (as represented by me!). For starters I should point out that Steelcase, Herman Miller and HNI companies were not present. I’m sure each company had its reasons for skipping the biggest show in Europe.

On the other hand, Teknion had a very large space and a stunning set-design. Michael Vanderbyl turned in his usual stunning design and according to Terry McAllister, Teknion’s head of Sales for everything outside North America, the realization of the design was accomplished by a small team out of Teknion’s U.K. office. When we visited, President and CEO David Feldberg was greeting visitors and the place was humming with activity as Euro visitors got their first chance to experience Zones, winner of Best of Competition in the Contract Best of NeoCon product awards contest.

We were greeted at the entry to the Haworth stand by a platform of Fern chairs, extending its launch to Europe. The display motif was similar to the one used at NeoCon, although less extravagant. The design and development of the back was again the focus of the presentation and Fern chairs were used in settings throughout the showroom.

Patricia Urquiola was present and her influence was quite evident throughout the display. Many of the products on display have been designed by Ms. Urquiola over the last three or four years.

Interface Deutschland GmbH was positioned well in a high traffic aisle not far from Haworth. Its stand was open and inviting with a “worktable” area where designers could pick, mix and match colors, textures and patterns.

Andreu World stuck close to its brand image of simple elegant products displayed simply and elegantly.

Italian manufacturer, Arper has entered the North American market in the right way with manufacturing established in North Carolina and an extensive line-up of seating and meeting products. I was very taken with a high quality speaker system that comes in a variety of shapes and sizes for mounting on the wall in a large conference/meeting room. Perhaps my own difficulty in hearing well in some presentation rooms was the key influence, but I also liked to idea of highly functional “wall art.”

Buzzispace seems to me to be the Belgian mouse that roared. This small company continues to act like a very big one. Its stand was the double space type and it was stuffed full of new product launches. BuzziSpace introduced three new seating ranges and a whole bevy of acoustic treatments and materials. And of course its BuzziJungle was on hand, although the European guests seemed less inclined to climb on it than their American counterparts at NeoCon.

Framery continues to stick to its knitting, expanding its eerily silent sound booths to accommodate more and larger applications. Now it has added small table and chair arrangements to allow for more than just the odd phone call.

I remember being impressed at Orgatec 2014 by the crowds at Humanscale. Well no backsliding was evident this year. Every time I passed by, the place was packed with visitors trying out its range of ergonomic products. Humanscale founder Bob King was on hand meeting and greeting.

Koleksiyon is quickly gaining traction in the U.S. with its highly adaptable “Open Work” products, the most obvious of which is the tepee shaped Oblivion; a highly adaptable construct that can define private or communal space in the open plan.

If there was a memo telling the interior furnishings community to abandon the sleek clean aesthetic that has characterized corporate office planning for the last several decades, Unifor must have missed it. This year’s Unifor stand was a veritable single-handed bulwark against the incursion of homey-looking furniture. Unifor was slick and cool, displaying is usual degree of refinement to an unusual degree.

Wilkhahn continues to hold a leading position in the European design furniture world. Its stand was large and largely packed at all times with visitors happily folding and unfolding the company’s folding-nesting-training table. The award winning On and In chairs were getting a good workout too. But by far the most striking new product was the new chair designed by Jehs & Laub for Davis and marketed here as Zen; licensed by Wilkhahn for distribution in Europe as the Graph chair.

Drones can carry cameras, deliver bombs and missiles, and apparently they will soon be delivering packages for Amazon. So why not advertising? Egan Visual found a way to be present at Orgatec without all the cost of renting and outfitting a stand. As a seller of advertising my hat is totally off to them and to the company that deployed the blimpy drones!

I ran into Dennis Cahill of the New York Design Center at the entry to the Vitra “Work” expo I wrote about in officeinsight back on the 10th of October (read it here). So I asked him, “What did you think?” His reply was the perfect description of what Vitra pulled off at Orgatec 2016. He said, “I think this should get the ‘Best of Competition’ for showroom design of all time!” It was so good I couldn’t include a full review here, but will write a full article devoted only to that subject in a future issue of officeinsight. A tour de force.

Of course the organizers presented an excellent program of events designed to act as a source of knowledge and inspiration for the international office furniture industry. Topics addressed at the fair were billed as “new ideas on the current trends of team working, digitalization, holistic interiors and the attractiveness of the workplace.” In high-caliber sessions, trade visitors from all over the world learned, exchanged ideas and discussed trends and pressing issues of theory and practice.

I went to a seminar presented by Microsoft, but left shortly after it began because it was 100% in German, of which I speak only a small number of menu words. Oh well, I usually leave the seminars to our editor, Mallory. After all, the product and espresso are in the stands!