Elementary homes

We’re going to be stuck with the catchphrase “home office” for some time to come. The notion that people will increasingly work from home, plugged into the Net and supported by modems, voice-mail and other electronic kit, is what’s driving the international office furniture set – even now, some four years after the concept was first mooted.

And the response, judging by exhibitors at the Orgatec show in Cologne last month, is to incorporate curves wherever possible, to introduce light woods and colour and to put wheels on just about everything. The bigger systems furniture companies with a reputation for producing yards of desks tend to take the idea to ridiculous extremes, producing “jack in the box” units that open out to reveal all you ever needed in an office system. These are joined together and made of so-called “domestic” materials such as wood and canvas.

How many Brits will subscribe to the view that working from home requires special, often expensive furniture – and have the space to install it – remains to be seen. However inefficient, the kitchen table is still favourite for folk occasionally called upon to combine domestic life with work, and you’d be hard-pushed to think of a UK company that’s keen to buy office furniture for home-workers.

What we do have though is a real need for flexible working within the office, with teamwork taking over from hierarchical management systems and project meetings being a regular part of life. Furniture can help with this, and one of the most forward-thinking systems has to be German manufacturer Wilkhahn’s Confair range of mobile conference furniture. Launched at Orgatec two years ago and doing nicely on the Continent, Confair has still to make a breakthrough with specifiers in the UK, who claim it’s beyond their price range.

This year the concept has been extended to take in Conrack, a new modular aluminium shelving system fitted with glides or wheels and capable of being configured to take AV equipment as well as files or books. Designed by Wiege, the consultancy set up by Wilkhahn’s former in-house design team, Conrack is good on detail and quality of materials and works well with other Wilkhahn products, including the new Logon tables by Andreas Striko.

Good news at the fair from Wilkhahn amid rumours that it’s going through tough times was that it is co-winner with Polish scientist and ecologist Professor Dr Maciej Nowicki of Germany’s coveted 1996 Ecology Prize. Wilkhahn’s win is for successfully combining ecology with commerce.

Flexibility is the key to most office chairs these days and manufacturers are keen to show you the way theirs clicks up at the back, swivels at the armrests or simply adjusts to the right height for the sitter – each making bold claims that the features are new and unique.

There were few genuine breakthroughs in Cologne this year, but Vitra had a very elegant office chair in the shape of Meda by Alberto Meda. The Italian designer’s debut design for the Swiss company is one of the lightest chairs to appear on the market this year. The mechanical parts are incorporated into the structure and a transparent open-weave fabric back is an option, creating a simple, classic line harking back to the days of US greats Charles and Ray Eames, whose designs for Vitra still sell.

Winning few fans at the show were chairs by British designers: Foster and Partners’ Kite chair for Tecno; and PSD Associates’ new chair for Hille. Kite is comfortable enough and is equipped with all the right adjustments. But what the product literature terms the “aesthetical characteristics” – ie a kite-shaped backrest made of folded metal – appears to be no more than cosmetic and not the most elegant feature at that. It rather smacks of the name of the product determining the design.

Of more interest to furniture buffs was Tecno’s newly announced takeover of fellow Italian firm Marcatré and what that might mean for Milan-based King & Miranda and other designers working for the latter. Watch this space for more about that one.

PSD’s chair meanwhile was a disappointment. Again it functions well enough, but the plastic “love handles” at the base of the back that the sitter clings on to to adjust the back height are an ugly addition to an otherwise indifferent design. It’s a far cry from Fred Scott’s array of great seating for Hille and the Vivaldi range he’s had a hand in for its sister company Evertaut.

One of the best chairs at Orgatec had little to do with the office, unless you include the canteen. Designed by Barcelona-based Argentinian Jorge Pensi for Kusch, the Hola steel and plastic stacker features some neat details in the shaping of the back and arms. The light modern design marks a shift in direction for the German manufacturer, whose president Dieter Kusch is keen to see it keeping close to the DM280 mark (around 120) when it becomes available in the UK. Pensi has gone on record as wanting to get away from chair design, and is currently working on housewares for an Italian company, but while he continues to turn out simple lines like this, he’s going to find it hard to escape chair commissions completely.

If he did, he could do worse than sell his talents to young Belgian company Bulo, which brought in French architect Jean Nouvel to design the Quasi Normal industrial style steel and birchwood desk. Quasi Normal is part of Bulo’s Carte Blanche scheme which gives top creatives as diverse as fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester and Nouvel a free hand to design a piece of office furniture.

New from Bulo at Orgatec was the minimal M2 computer table, which features a “floating” metre-square tabletop supported on one side only by a storage pedestal.

But the real show-stealer on the Belgian company’s stand was the year-old H20 desk, designed by architects Claire Bataille and Paul Ibens. Beautifully detailed, this simple table with its light timber top and metal legs is about as simple as you can get. Now there’s something worth thinking about for the kitchen… er, home-office.