by Brianna Crandall — June 19, 2013—At the NeoCon 2013 contract furnishings show held in Chicago June 10-12, ergonomic product designer and manufacturer Humanscale exhibited products that reportedly embody the central tenets of the brand: performance, simplicity and beauty. The Diffrient Smart task chair is featured in a previous FMLink article, and the Float height-adjustable table and the Element Disc task light are described below. The Humanscale TouchPoint T7 technology won a Gold Award in the Best of NeoCon Competition in the Healthcare Solutions/Technology Support category.
The Float height-adjustable table was created to promote movement and a healthy lifestyle, helping workers avoid the dangers of either sitting or standing all day. With unique constant-force technology, Float enables simple, one-hand weight adjustment, and easy height adjustment for ergonomic sit-stand usage—all without the use of an obstructive crossbeam, electricity or a cumbersome crank, says Humanscale. Float is also built with measures to prevent the possibility of injury; its innovative safety feature only allows adjustment when the desktop and contents are properly balanced.
Available in a variety of colors and finishes, Float accommodates a range of tabletop widths from 48 inches to 72 inches and can be used with any manufacturer’s tabletops to ensure aesthetic consistency with any installed or specified furniture systems. Made for a long life, Float is composed predominantly of recyclable steel and is designed with minimal parts and manufacturing processes. Unlike electric-powered height-adjustable tables, Float is able to balance the table’s load without using energy, which makes it exceptionally sustainable, says Humanscale.
Float tables can help projects achieve valuable LEED credits with such sustainable features as: recycled content; made predominantly of highly recyclable steel and aluminum; shipped in packaging that contains recycled content; table tops containing no added urea formaldehyde; SCS Indoor Advantage Gold certified; and more. The online product information page includes videos detailing how Float works and the advantages of using the product, as well as Design Engineer Hamid Zebarjad’s take on Float’s innovative design and mechanisms.
Element Disc is a task light that offers customizable illumination and fingertip adjustability. Providing complete user control, Element Disc features intuitive, smart dimming functionality, which affords the user seven levels of brightness and uses memory to save the last preferred light setting selected by the user. Creating an ultra-wide footprint of warm, glare-free light, Element Disc uses innovative Thin Film LED (light-emitting diode) Technology that was first manifested in the company’s award-winning Horizon task light.
For exceptional sustainability, Element Disc is equipped with a passive infrared (PIR) occupancy sensor, which automatically turns the light off or on when the user leaves or enters the area. On the online product page, Designer Andrew Pick and Lighting Engineer Kelly Ann Rockwell talk about the product’s “revolutionary” design and technology.
