NeoCon® Product Wars is 'Da Bomb'

A war is brewing at NeoCon® 2010—and it’s happening all online. Contract magazine and Designer Pages today launched their new online tool which provides event attendees and A&D online users the chance to cast their own vote for the products deserving to win this year’s Best of NeoCon® Award. It’s the first of it’s kind for the industry.

The tool functions much like other “this or that” voting tools found online and on social media sites like Facebook (e.g. “Hot or Not,” “Rate Your Friends,” etc), allowing users to continuously choose the “best” of two same-category product options. Users can vote as many times as they want in five categories: Carpet/Modular Tiles; Conference Room Furniture; Furniture Systems; Seating/Conference; and Seating/Sofas & Lounge.

Read more about Product Wars at ContractDesign.Com and take part at my.neocon.com/best-of-neocon

It’s time to “forget voting for presidential candidates. Screw your civic duties and vote for the best products instead!”

--Stacy Straczynski

Steelcase ‘Tweet’ on Target

Steelcase, the world’s largest office furniture company, is taking action to get on board with social media. To announce their partnership with Target to sell 11 select chair models via the Target.com site, the company blasted a 125-character Tweet—their briefest press release ever!

What a great step forward for Steelcase. Not only is the company now gaining traction on the consumer level (in addition to its steady designer clients), but Steelcase is also showing that it is confident enough that its products can market themselves via word-of-mouth in the digital age. Not only will Target followers most likely add Steelcase to their Twitter repertoire, but the company will have that many more eyes looking out for new products in the future. Plus, it’s a smart way to save dollars on marketing, as well.

The Steelcase tweet is a leading example of how A&D manufacturers, distributors, and designers can take advantage of social media and new forms of marketing. Since many in the A&D industry are still behind in fully understanding digital advancements (many manufacturers still opt for print-based advertisments and promotions), it’s nice to see someone taking a bold lead in this fashion.

--Stacy Straczynski

Spec by Spec: New Seating Design Software

By Adam Figman, Editorial Intern

Michigan-based seating leader American Seating has designed two programs, both available at www.americanseating.com, to save the time of busy designers and architects who don’t have all day to deal with product catalogs and the like.

The first, Specification “Spec” Builder, is better for those who think textually. Essentially, the builder lets users roll through a set of seating options – which model, what kind of wood, what kind of cushion, what color, etc. – to arrive at a customized product. After hitting “download specification” at the end of the options, a wordy, but organized, detailed PDF pops up with all of the specifics: quality assurance, description, operation, construction, parts, options, etc.

The seating available through the Spec Builder is ideal for lecture halls, auditoriums and computer laboratories. 

The Focus Configurator, meanwhile, designs table/chair combinations for higher education use, such as the average university classroom. The variety of selections includes two tables, three swing-away chair, 10 edge moldings, 36 metal or wood modesty panels, nine metal or wood privacy screens, power/data modules, and plenty of finish options. It’d be hard to ask for much more customization than that.

After selecting which of each you’d like, a very simple picture pops up, showing exactly what you’ve selected. It’s a lot more straightforward than the Spec Builder, showing you exactly what you’re final customized product will resemble with a small amount of text accompanying it. Users can save the PDF given at the end to help facilitate the ordering process. 

The moral of the story? The easier to use, the better. And the companies that are the quickest to adapt to this, and incorporate the Web in doing so, will put themselves in the best position moving forward.

Is Beauty Only Skin Deep?

By Stacy Straczynski, Associate Editor

Customized skins seem to be all the rage these days for iPods, iPhones, laptops, and any other tech gadget you can name. But Inhabit yesterday posted an item about a new photovoltaic skin concept, designed by the Laboratory for Visionary Architects (LAVA), would serve more of a purpose then simply adding a touch of personalization: the eco-friendly Enviro Skin would solve the aesthetic failure of the University of Technology Sydney Tower, which has been dubbed by Sydney as the its ugliest building.

Video via Architecture + Design

The concept calls for a composite, light-weight mesh textile to envelope the 1960s building in a cocoon that will help to reduce the structure’s carbon footprint by collecting rainwater, generating electricity, and helping to ventilate the building. At night, the skin would serve as a media surface to communicate information to students, much like a billboard in times square.

Design hits DC on July 24

The Cooper-Hewitt will celebrate the 10th Annual National Design Awards with a slew of free public programs on July 24 in Washington, DC. The day will kick off with a few concurrent programs at 10 am at various museums around the National Mall, and later in the day the 2009 winners will be formally recognized at a ceremony at the White House hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama. While the WH event is, of course, invite only, here's the schedule of programming for the masses:

Design X Details: Materials and Their Effects

Fashion design winner Francisco Costa and interior design winners Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown of TSAO & McKOWN Architects will chat about the role of materials in their work at the Corcoran College of Art & Design (500 17th Street NW).

Design X Community: Transform Your Neighborhood

Architecture winners Christopher Sharples, Coren Sharples and Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects and landscape design winner Walter Hood will gather at The National Building Museum (401 F Street NW) and focus on how design can be used to create a sense of community.

Design X Information: Interpreting the Present and the Past

Product design winners Boym Partners and communication design winner Steve Duenes of The New York Times graphics department are convening at The Smithsonian Castle (1000 Jefferson Drive SW) to discuss the relationship between current events and their design processes.

Design X Experience: The Future of Interaction Design

Design mind winner Amory Lovine and lifetime achievement recipient Bill Moggridge will address the future of technology and sustainability at the National Museum of the American Indian (Fourth Street and Independence Avenue SW)

How far to great architecture? There's an app for that....

Despite not yet jumping on the iPhone bandwagon, I recently acquired an iPod touch and have been downloading applications—aka apps—like Apple is paying me to do so. But a new app from 29GPS (via ArchDaily), has me rethinking my cell service. The 29GPS Architecture app offers a daily selection of architecture and tells you how far you are from it. 

Selections are shows with photos and video, as well as radar to indicate your distance from the building, and a Google Map pinpointing its locale. Even better, it's available for download for free! More, including a video showing the app features, is available on 29GPS's web site.

AN UPDATE: After successfully downloading the app and playing around a bit, it seems what it does, instead of generating a list of how close you are to nearest great architecture is to your location, it instead lists a variety of well-known spaces and then calculates your distance from them.

Pick up a pencil!

Thanks to our friends at HOK for the heads up that this Saturday is Drawing Day, a worldwide initiative to draw for the sake of art. The goal? One million drawings online on June 6. How does an event that encourages a pen or pencil over a mouse work online? The concept of sharing is linking the digital world with the handmade: Participants are encouraged to upload their work on a variety of sites, including YouTube and Facebook. What will you draw?

iMix and iMatch?

 

Benjamin Moore is jumping on the app bandwagon with the upcoming release of ben® Color Capture™, an iPhone application that matches colors from your iPhone pics to Benjamin Moore hues. On top of that, ben Color Capture taps into the phone's GPS system to locate the nearest Benjamin Moore retailer near you at the moment you use the application.

Starting June 1, iPhone users can download the app, which promises to be intuitive and easy to use. Gliding a finger across a digital photo taken with the iPhone, zooming in to a color and tapping on a "match" key will pop out a strip of colors with the closest paint match highlighted. Shaking the phone will also provide up to four coordinating colors. Favorites can be saved and enlarged.

The best, the worst and the plain, old mediocre

If you had a chance to vote the best and worst new architecture of your town, what would top either list? For Torontonians, the chance to rank your favorite and less-than-favorite new buildings about town is once again here with the annual Pug Awards. The awards, formerly the Puglies, were created in 2004 to raise public awareness of architecture and elevate design standards for development projects in Toronto.

In addition to the awards (which will be handed out in early June), the program also includes Pug Ed, an outreach program that facilitates dialogue among local elementary students about architecture and design in their every day lives. The idea? To foster an appreciation of the importance of well-conceived, responsible design practices in an urban environment.

Back on the Pug Awards side of the program, voting is conducted online, where voters can log on and review the nominees. Vote choices are, simply, Love it, Like it or Hate it. Voters are encouraged to consider a number of factors, including the design details, exterior details, the context of the building, and good, ol' innovation. This year's crop of nominees include 32 buildings (24 residential and 8 commercial or institutional spaces), all of which were completed in 2008 and are each more than 50,000 sq. ft. Among the commercial nominees: The Art Gallery of Ontario by Frank Gehry. How do you think he'll fare? If your local stomping grounds had a Puglies program of its own, what would make the top of your list?

Launching today: Green & Design

Today marks the debut of a new digital publication from the Contract family: Green & Design. Focusing on sustainability in the built environment, the digital publication is the first of a three-prong initiative that aims to give the A&D community the latest must-read news on all things green. A sister publication for Contract, Green & Design pulls from the expertise of the design and real estate titles of our parent company, Nielsen Business Media, which include Contract (of course!), Commercial Property News, DDI, Hospitality Design, Multi-Housing News and Kitchen & Bath Business.

To debut in the coming months are an extensive web portal and virtual events. But you don't have to wait to check out the new magazine here.