The Ghidorzi interior design team is just in from North America’s largest design expo for commercial interiors, bringing back plenty of inspiration for design build clients and tenants.  NeoCon is three days of non-stop resources, energy and ideas for architecture and design professionals and the single most important industry event of the year.

The theme this year was Place Matters, pointing to a heightened focus on how people live while they are at work and the impact it has on how well they do their jobs.  National Office Furniture summed it up here.

According to our interior designers, these are the trends and takeaways that are most relevant to the Class A office, retail, health care, dental and manufacturing spaces we serve in Wausau, Madison and throughout Wisconsin.

TAKEAWAY #1:  The workplace as a Home Away From Home – a notion that has come full circle. 

A byproduct of the tech boom was the push to make work feel like home, but for all the wrong reasons.  Namely, that employees would be working around the clock and not going home.  Amenities included foosball tables, furniture suitable for snoozing and fully stocked fridges.

The commercial design industry is breathing new life into the Home Away from Home concept, thankfully with the much healthier motive of making the workplace a pleasant place to be for all the right reasons that National covered on its banner:  Creating spaces where people want to be makes them more collaborative, comfortable, productive, creative, focused and inspired.

What that means for the workplace is a heightened focus on design, comfort and stylish features not unlike we all strive for at home.  There is a decidedly residential undercurrent in the commercial design world these days that includes:

Furniture and accents that blend style with workplace function.

INTERFACE

IZZI

Largely neutral color palettes accented with bold pops of color ~ PATCRAFT

LA CASSE

Living walls reminiscent of the beloved houseplant, with the added punch of improving office aesthetics, air quality, energy saving, health, wellness and acoustics. ~ DIRTT

TAKEAWAY #2:  It’s time to right-size the open office concept.
Now that the trend of open work environments is here to stay with individual offices and high-walled cubicles continuing to fade away, the emphasis is on fine tuning these wide open spaces to make them more functional, flexible, comfortable and valuable for business owners and employees with:

• Moveable Wall Systems that are light weight and easy to reconfigure to accommodate typical business needs such as new employees and departmental moves.  Manufacturer favorites include DIRTT, Haworth and our Wisconsin neighbor KI.
• Personal Space that employees can call their own, moving away from purely shared space in bullpen and pod environments.
• Creative Storage Space to compensate for the phasing out of conventional office furniture that provided employees with space to store their stuff.

HERMAN MILLER

• Noise control in an effort to preserve productivity and everyone’s sanity.  The simplest way to improve acoustics is adding more sound-absorbing textiles into the workspace on chairs, walls, even art.  Felt is the current industry favorite textile and is emerging in an endless array of colors and patterns.

BUZZI SPACE

TAKEAWAY #3:  Putting the Fun in Functional Wall Space
Walls are playing an increasing role in the design and function of workspaces.  Sound absorbing felt and rubber wall art are good examples that we cited when referencing noise control efforts.  The growing trend of making good and decorative use of walls also includes:

• Vinyl Graphics that infuse a distinct brand presence into the workplace or set the tone of the space with large-scale illustrations – a strategy that is particularly popular in children’s areas.  Here is a custom vinyl wall graphic we recently created in a tenant space.

Here is a custom vinyl wall graphic we recently created in a tenant space.

• Whiteboards have graduated from after-thought additions to functional focal points of collaborative workspaces.  Dry erase paint from manufacturers like Sherwin-Williams make it easy to create a whiteboard wall.
  Whiteboard panels and screens are an equally popular installation.  Check out this wall, which incorporates bold graphics AND a whiteboard.

DIRTT

NeoCon is truly the epicenter of innovation in commercial design and never fails to energize us and inspire us with countless new ideas for clients and tenants of Ghidorzi Companies.