Environments
Windows Into Their World
ReadAn exhibition featuring objects selected from the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. Three distinct explorations—plywood, aluminum and graphics—reveal curious minds unafraid to ask questions, explore and consider possibilities not yet in our vocabulary.
Photography by Nicholas Calcott.
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200 Hudson Street
ReadDesigntex’s new corporate headquarters is located at the boundary of Soho and Tribeca on the ninth floor of a typical 1920’s industrial building that once housed printers and binders. Standard Issue worked closely with Designtex to create an office that fosters a culture of creative collaboration while also providing spaces that have visual and acoustic privacy for focused individual work or small meetings. The 10,000 square foot space combines communal spaces, open cubicles, and private spaces and showcases examples of Designtex collaborations, innovations and products.
Photography by Dean Kaufmann.
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Reimagining The Brooklyn Bridge
ReadThe Brooklyn Bridge is a symbol of the city and a landmark destination for visitors from around the globe. Our proposal celebrates the bridge by enhancing its functionality—as a conduit over the East River—and transforming it into a fully realized cultural experience.
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The Bauhaus Project
ReadThis exhibition in Designtex’s Chicago showroom celebrates the unsung women weavers of the Bauhaus on the occasion of its centennial. Oversized black and white documentary photographs line the showroom, capturing the culture of the school. An array of freestanding walls display Designtex’s new collections of textiles and wallcovering developed in collaboration with the Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers estates.
Location photography by Christopher Barrett.
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5X5
ReadThis new Designtex showroom is as an exhibition space, a learning space and an open resource center. Inaugurating the new design is an exhibition titled Designtex 5x5, a Crypton Collection, and the launch of Celliant® with its science explained and hands on demonstrations of various products.
Location photography by Christopher Barrett. Illustrations by Gino Bud Hoiting.
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Food and Retail Cart Program
ReadThe High Line, in New York City, is a mile-long public space where visitors can meander, explore, and relax, enjoying a unique perspective of the city. Built on a historic elevated railway line, the park is a popular destination for both residents and tourists. With thousands of visitors enjoying the High Line each day, the need arose to deliver a consistent experience for food and retail partners in the park. We were among a select list of participants invited to propose a design for a program of branded mobile kiosks stationed throughout the park.
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Span 2018
ReadSPAN is an annual conference hosted by Google to explore the ways in which design and technology influence our everyday lives. SPAN 2018 took place in a 125 year old, brick and timber warehouse in the maritime district of Helsinki. We designed a flexible system of totems and signage that could be adapted to the wide variety of spaces within the 35,000 square foot building. Infill panels featured information and graphics that supported a variety of activities and informed the attendees.
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This is not a chair. Ceci n’est pas une chaise.
ReadThe exhibition featured the work of forty renowned artists, architects and designers from around the world, each of whom questions the notion of functionality and aesthetics as defining characteristics of the object we think of as a chair. In addition to designing the exhibition, we curated it.
Location photography by Keith Isaacs.
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NYC Showroom
ReadThe Designtex showroom is located on the eighteenth floor of the D&D building in New York City. Flooded with light, the space offers the ideal environment to view textiles and wall coverings. Textile displays line the walls, enabling easy viewing of entire product offerings. A third wall features a custom-designed wall covering display.
Location photography by Blaine Davis.
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The Forest and the Trees
ReadThe Forest and the Trees is a multifaceted installation in Designtex's Chicago showroom celebrating the company’s products. The centerpiece features over 100 textiles suspended from front to back of the main gallery. In the middle of the space is an island display of cushions in a continual state of flux as visitors handle and rearrange them. New cloaking technology, film products and cleanable finishes are demonstrated in dedicated spaces around the showroom.
Location photography by Blaine Davis
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Gowanus Open Studios 2017
ReadStandard Issue Presents is an ongoing project that showcases the work of friends and colleagues. As a sponsor of Arts Gowanus, a non-profit organization supporting artists in our community, we participated in their annual open studios weekend by hosting a performance titled “(You Make Me Feel Like)” by colleague—and artist— Lina McGinn. We designed a stage, opened our garage door, and the four-minute piece was continuously performed for passersby for two days.
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Making Places
ReadThe 2017 3form showroom is a journey into the power of materials to define and shape our experience. It featured three materials for three immersive experiences, from elemental rusted steel, to atmospheric color to the absence of sound.
Location photography by Blaine Davis
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250 Colors. One System.
Read3form’s 2016 NeoCon showroom in Chicago was an immersive transformation of the new color system. Large disks of color resins were suspended, slowly revolving. The resulting effect was magical, continuously changing with new color combinations and juxtapositions. The showroom won Best of Competition honors and Best Showroom Less Than 4,000 Square Feet.
Location photography by Christopher Barrett
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Congress Square
ReadCongress Square Park in Portland’s Arts District is an underutilized resource at the intersection of several streets, a handful of cultural attractions, restaurants, shops, galleries, and other local businesses. Congress Square is our response to a competition inviting proposals that reimagine the park as a vital and living urban space.
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Oppositions: Forms & Fabrics
ReadOppositions: Forms & Fabrics is an invitation to consider upholstery’s transformative power. We assembled an eclectic collection of furnishings ranging from 1850 through 2014, and—in collaboration with Designtex—each piece was reupholstered with a new textile. These were presented in vignettes staged on thick felt covering the floor and walls, offering the viewer a respite with an invitation to sit and relax.
Location photography by Christopher Barrett
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Made to Measure Program
ReadMade to Measure by Designtex introduces a new paradigm for the creation, specification and production of commercial wallcovering by using cutting-edge digital technologies to achieve new levels of customization. Our role is to identify artists, illustrators and photographers with whom we can work to select and recreate imagery suitable to the proprietary production process.
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Guggenheim Helsinki
ReadWe were invited to participate in the Guggenheim Foundation’s Helsinki Museum competition. Our solution would be built on an industrial stretch of waterfront in downtown Helsinki, extending an adjacent city park over the roadside and onto a gently sloping rooftop, and offering visitors a vista from which to view the harbor and city. As prescribed by the Foundation, the museum would include several galleries and multi-functional spaces.
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An Uncommon Vision, Tokyo
ReadThis was the third installation of an exhibition celebrating the life and work of Herman Miller’s mid-century creative director Alexander Girard. This iteration took place in the street level showroom of Herman Miller’s offices in the downtown section of Japan’s capital. Unique to this installation, a suite of iconic Herman Miller products were upholstered in designs by Girard, demonstrating their vitality decades after they were introduced.
Location photography by Daici Ano.
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DIFFA Dining by Design
ReadA small scale space created for the annual Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS fundraiser Dining by Design. The space employs a wallcovering design from Designtex’s Made to Measure program that adapted a Charley Harper mosaic.
Location photography by Jeff Anzulewicz.
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Material Village
ReadFive symbolic houses, large enough to enter and explore, create a literal village. Each features a different material type suspended or draped within its framework, while collectively they form a lush material hamlet.
Location photography by Jeff Anzulewicz.
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An Uncommon Vision, NY
ReadAn exhibition and retail space located in the heart of New York’s Meatpacking District on West 14th Street, arranged to coincide with the 2014 edition of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. This was the second of three exhibitions that began in Chicago in 2012.
Location photography by Nicholas Calcott and Jeff Anzulewicz
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The Living Office
ReadAn installation designed to introduce the conceptual framework of Herman Miller’s “Living Office”, coinciding with the annual Salone del Mobile fair in Milan. Suspended translucent textile panels feature life-sized imagery from illustrator Daniel Carlsten, combining and layering to create a living montage and immersive architectural experience.
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Color Wheel
ReadThe inaugural installation in the new showroom for Designtex featured a collection of over 200 textiles displayed as a chromatic monolith.The display enabled close examination and touch, revealing the intricacies of the textile constructions.
Location photography by Christopher Barrett and Jeff Anzulewicz
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Color Wheel Collection
ReadThe inaugural installation in the new showroom for Designtex featured a collection of over 200 textiles displayed as a chromatic monolith. To accompany the installation and introduce the new products, we designed a small book featuring the same chromatic sequence.
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Work Table
ReadWe designed a large ash wood work table to support the day-to-day activities in Designtex’s Chicago showroom. A generous Corian work surface provides ample room to work with textiles, while aluminum trays are used to store memos and other office materials. One end of the table was left open to accommodate large rolls of fabric, binders and other bulky items.
Location photography by Jeff Anzulewicz.
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Comfort in Motion
ReadAn installation to launch a redesigned office chair, coinciding with the annual Salone del Mobile in Milan. The front third of the showroom was transformed into a science lab and workshop, with the walls transformed into a larger-than-life blackboard filled with illustrations by Brian Rea. His remarkable art featured the research, design and engineering that led to the creation of the chair.
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An Uncommon Vision, Chicago
ReadThe first installation of a traveling exhibition celebrating the ideas and work of multi-talented Alexander Girard, Herman Miller’s creative director for twenty years. The exhibition includes over 100 artifacts curated from the Herman Miller archives and private collectors to showcase Girard’s lifework.
Location photography by Christopher Barrett
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The Art and Science of Seating
ReadA free-standing exhibition illustrating the many innovations in the design and development of Herman Miller seating. The modular pedestals used to demonstrate the chairs’ features have been installed inside various Herman Miller showrooms around the world.
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Singular Forms
ReadA collection of textiles and materials was developed in partnership with New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Their extensive collection of minimalist art inspired both the designs of the materials and their display in a Chicago showroom.
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Material Architecture
ReadWe created a dynamic, flowing space that invited exploration and discovery within the confines of a triangular showroom. This was accomplished with suspended panels made of textile and acrylic resin, showcasing the newest product introductions.
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Material Matters
ReadDesigntex’s growing reputation for material innovation and invention was realized in a 2001 showroom design that showcased several dozen experimental textiles wrapped onto symbolic chair frames.
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Akio Nukaga Pop-Up
ReadStandard Issue Presents is an ongoing project to showcase the work of friends and colleagues. For our inaugural presentation, we collaborated with Anzu New York to host a pop-up shop featuring the work of master Japanese potter Akio Nukaga. The front of our office—which benefits from abundant natural light year-round—was converted into a storefront for the occasion. Two tables were created by lashing together wood dowels using the traditional Japanese square knot. Indigo fabric partitions, plants, and our own Paperclip lamps combined to create a calm environment for the pottery to be displayed and, ultimately, sold to a steady stream of visitors.
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Living Lights
ReadThis exhibition featured several dozen lamps that were designed and engineered to change in intensity as visitors congregate and pass. More than 30 fixtures, each 25 feet tall, were suspended from a special ceiling structure, very gently swaying with the movement of air.
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