Some 50,000 design professionals converging on Chicago for NeoCon, which starts today, will encounter thousands of product launches from 500 exhibitors. New directions in function and style promise to reveal themselves within this tremendous volume. Yet for attendees of the trade show who prefer to see what’s next in shorthand, one stop at Calligaris Contract can predict the future. The brand’s 2016 contract collection encapsulates the latest thoughts and trends in commercial interiors.
One Size Fits None
Contemporary workplace design has effectively ripped up the gray flannel suit: No longer must people conform to a cookie-cutter workstation. Rather, office interiors are organized by various activities and modes of work, and occupants may choose to rotate between zones that suit their productivity best. Hospitality designers are, similarly, accommodating multiple postures and points of view, as hotel lobbies transform into multipurpose community places and cafes that once served finite meals now sustain mobile workers well after lunch hour ends.
Bahia
Multiple products in Calligaris Contract’s new inventory support the design industry’s newfound pluralism. The group’s in-house designers Dondoli and Pocci conceived the Bahia seat at multiple heights, and in indoor and outdoor versions, in light of this trend. Specifiers can place all types of Bahias in an office’s or restaurant’s activity zones, while the chair’s high-gloss wraparound Restilon shell connects them.
Academy
Calligaris’s Academy series opts for visual continuity over uniformity, thanks to its additional specification options. Bases range from a four-legged tubular metal configuration that evokes the Eameses’ Eiffel design to legs in woven rod, beech and ash. The shell, meanwhile, is available with upholstery or Restilon finish, making for more than 100 possible aesthetic and functional combinations.
Domesticating Space
Annie offers further evidence of the one-size-fits-none trend, as this new collection comprises a chair that accommodates user diversity. It also evidences the increasingly domestic character of commercial spaces. Annie effects a comfortable atmosphere through materiality. Its frame is manufactured in three wooded leg finishes, and its shell is upholstered in leather or fabric.
Annie
Of all of the Calligaris products on display at NeoCon, nothing conveys home more than the Lazy armchair. This midcentury modernism–inspired armchair, designed by Michele Menescardi, has sinuous lines and wide, all-encompassing dimensions. The soft seat and lumbar cushion on cold-foamed polyurethane shell make this armchair feel as relaxing as it looks. For added relief, Lazy features a rocking and swiveling mechanism.
Lazy
Work-Life Balance
Calligaris Contract is also blurring the boundary between contract and residential spaces by manufacturing new products that may be sourced for homes just as well as commercial interiors. Igloo, for example, is a hybrid dining-easy chair, and its lightweight structure — four independent tapered wood legs — pairs contract-grade durability with the easy movability that homeowners desire. Meanwhile, the new Etoile series achieves that same combination thanks to its structure, which features legs with a triangular section. These products not only support people’s working from home or their home-like treatment of work or hospitality space, but also help them do so more smartly.
Etoile
Calligaris Contract underscores the intelligence of its products by offering full contract solutions. From its base in Manzano, Italy, to its US headquarters in High Point, NC, the company’s team of contract experts consults specifiers in all phases of projects that recently include Residence Makati Diamonds in Manila and Venice’s NH Hotel Palazzo Barocci. While Calligaris’ manufacturing history dates to 1923, when it was an artisan workshop specializing in a single chair called Marocca, its contract group was founded in 2008 in response to growth in that market. It’s coming NeoCon presentation will be its fourth time participating in the Chicago event.