The showroom as ever-changing venue for experiment and celebration
Given all the changes in workplace design over the last decade, an office furniture showroom is no longer merely a space to showcase product. More and more it’s a lab for exploring new ways of working, testing new theories of collaboration and creativity, debuting new forms and launching new directions in design.
O+A’s vision for Kimball Park Avenue was to make this showroom a New York address for good ideas. When designers are visiting from other parts of the country or other parts of the world, Kimball will be their staging area, sanctuary and pop-up Manhattan headquarters. O+A sees this space changing in the same way a stage changes with each production.
To that end the design draws on a combination of stagecraft, technology and the energy of the street to create a living, ever-evolving rehearsal space for emerging talent.
Showcase and Workshop
Kimball’s New York showroom is not static display space, but an active work area. By assembling everything a designer needs to present his or her work to the community, Kimball and O+A have made this space a partner to each user’s vision and creativity. The opportunity to show not only your work but also your work process makes Kimball New York a unique venue for designers.
Layers of Inspiration
A mix of presentation arts will allow each installation to grow organically from the designer’s concept. Sometimes that means technology—digital projection, interactive walls. Sometimes it means hanging a cloth. This space is adaptable to all forms of branding. The ultimate result will be a layered patina of many visions that deepens with every process of design.
A Studio in Manhattan
Every creative person wants to have an impact in the city where reputations are made. With this showroom, Kimball becomes a destination for designers from across the river in Brooklyn or across the ocean in Milan. All will now have a Manhattan showcase—and a comfortable hangout on Park Avenue.
Kimball Canopy: A Tool for the Way We Work Now
When Kimball Office asked Primo Orpilla to design a benching system last year, he had already been thinking about what an ideal workstation should be. He had been thinking about it for 25 years. If a career in workplace design teaches you anything, it is that people work differently depending upon their moods, the project, the progress of the day.
With a tight deadline determined by Kimball’s desire to preview the piece at NeoCon, Primo set to work with assistant Emi Katagiri distilling everything he knew about workplace design into a single—and singular—piece of office furniture.
