.: June 2012

Last week I had featured Neocon showrooms. This week will highlight after-show events/newer designers during Neocon.

Founded by Christopher Gentner last year after years in the business fabricating metal products for clients. His showroom, in the River North District of Chicago, features all his own designs beautifully crafted furniture based in metal with leather, wood, and glass details. I wanted to take his ‘Bent’ desk home with me…gorgeous!!

Stool – Polished Aluminum & raw leather

Oki Sato

…of studio Nendo & Design Director for K% (founded in 2011 as well) presented his Black on Black collection at the Luminaire Showroom Chicago during Neocon.

Pics: http://luminaire.com/illuminate/1065/ All objects in the collection focus on form, devoid of distractions by using only woods and metals and reducing all color to black.

Separate from the K% Collection was his beautiful Lighting Installation - Growing Vases, an installation of hand-blown Czech bohemian glass lights with the blower’s pipe still attached glass.

More Pics here: http://www.lasvit.com/m.php?s=collections&id=214

Shared-Practice

Co-founded by Felicia Ferrone and David M. Krell

A great website for the design community!! It features useful information generated by other members of the site (no membership fee) such as events, resources, jobs, and forums. Not only is this website fantastic for designers, the co-founders (designers themselves) are genuinely nice & helpful.

Strand Design

Product design studio founded by Ted & Sharon Burdett in the Chicago West Loop. Products are from sustainably sourced materials in the city of Chicago as well as the manufacturing. I personally love their combination of powder coated steel and oil finished wood. Featured below are the Birdhouse Floor Lamp & Tripod Table

Merkled

Company of Kari Merkl based in both Portland, OR & Chicago IL. They as well work locally with vendors and companies to create custom furniture and fixtures. This multi-talented company also offers consulting services for varied design projects.

Think of all the fun configurations you could create with these coat hooks!!

Merkled coat hooks: powder-coated aluminum

Rebuilding Exchange

This site is amazing!! Here’s the run-down:

“Through a partnership with The ReUse People of America and contractors in the area, the ReBuilding Exchange gets most of its donated materials from sustainable deconstruction projects. The ReBuilding Exchange also accepts donated materials from renovation projects, and occasionally new materials that would otherwise end up in the landfill. These materials are sold for a fraction of the cost of new, so they stay out of our landfills, and are available to residents at all income levels, particularly those who can't afford the rising costs of such materials.”

Current inventory of items for sale on their Flickr acct: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebuildingexchange

Personal Favs: Vintage Pallets for $150, Large Filing cabinets $5-$25, Wine Crates $5, Green metal bins $25.

A few other designers I was unable to see but recommend checking out as well:

M26 Studio

Weetu

Greta De Parry

I spent last week, for the first time, attending Neocon at the Chicago Merchandise Mart. For those of you not familiar it’s a tradeshow that features products and resources for corporate, hospitality, healthcare, retail, government, institutional and residential. It came a shock to me that there wasn’t much lighting to be seen. One would think for such a large market there would be more options. None-the-less I did especially enjoy the products/showrooms of Bernhardt, Davis, Haworth, Herman Miller, and Izzy.

Next week I’ll cover Part 2 of Neocon focusing more on the independent designer side from Shared-Practice, Gentner Furniture, and a few others.