NeoCon 2016: Teknion wins Best of Competition (for Zones), four Gold Awards, Silver

by Brianna Crandall — June 17, 2016 — Teknion Corporation, an international designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative workplace interiors, has just announced that it won six prestigious awards in the Best of NeoCon Competition [see FMLink article] at the NeoCon 2016 contract furnishings show in Chicago June 13-15.

Teknion’s Zones, a comprehensive series of furniture designed by PearsonLloyd and intended to transform the office, earned four awards including the show’s top honor – Best of Competition. The Zones Collection also received a Gold Best of NeoCon award in the Furniture Collections for Collaboration category. Zones benches won a Gold Best of NeoCon in the Seating: Benches category, and Zones tables earned Silver in the Conference Room Furniture category. The Zones collection is described below.

Teknion Zones

PearsonLloyd-designed Zones, Best of Competition winner, is a comprehensive series of furniture designed to transform the office, challenging convention and changing the way people experience work.

The Teknion Sanna by Pablo lighting collection designed by Pablo Pardo collected a Gold Best of NeoCon award in the Lighting: Task / Desktop / Furniture-Integrated category. The Tek Pier integrated, height-adjustable, wall-mounted worksurface and monitor earned Gold in the Technology-Integrated Solutions category. These products will be detailed in separate future FMLink articles.

David Feldberg, Teknion president and CEO, said:

Winning five Best of NeoCon awards plus the Best of Competition is incredibly rewarding in light of the record number of product entries this year and their overall design excellence. We share these honors with Tom Lloyd and Luke Pearson whose design team, working in conjunction with our own designers, has done an exceptional job with Zones. We also share these awards with Pablo Pardo for Sanna, and our talented in-house design team for their work on Tek Pier and all of the other outstanding products we exhibited at NeoCon.

Zones

Zones is a comprehensive series of furniture designed to transform the office, challenging convention and changing the way people experience work. The collection is comprised of seating, tables, screens, easels and semi-private enclosures, which can be used as either intimate collaborative settings or a place of retreat for privacy. In addition to furniture settings, Zones encompasses lighting and accessories.

Teknion Zones Canteen Table

The Zones Canteen Table earned Silver in the Best of NeoCon Conference Room Furniture category.

The attention to macro and micro makes the collection distinctive, says Teknion.

Tom Lloyd of PearsonLloyd explains:

We designed Zones to address change in the office landscape from the fixed and formal settings common today to the informal and flexible settings of the future. Zones is a comprehensive series of furniture products that addresses the needs for focus, collaborative and workshop areas within the office environment. It includes new products, applications and settings for contemporary workstyles ranging from creative intimate collaborative settings to places of retreat. Zones also addresses the growing importance of hospitality spaces as a new form of workplace.

With Zones, create open or semi-enclosed collaborative settings that are lounge or table-based, and designed for sitting or standing. Tables in a variety of sizes and shapes serve meetings for two to half-a-dozen people. Simple chairs, benches, sofas and stools provide practical support and comfort in the spaces between the less flexible geometry of private offices, formal conference rooms and high-density workstations, or across a footprint. Screens can be positioned to lightly define a semi-private space to support teams.

Luke Pearson of PearsonLloyd adds:

We have reintroduced beech as an engineering material which formed the foundation for mass produced furniture in the early 20th century Europe. Beech is an incredible material bringing precision, form, craft and tactility into the office landscape. Authenticity of build becomes increasingly important in a world of hyper mass production. Warmth, humanity and simplicity within Zones provides a platform for focus and relaxation, for activity and contemplation.

Most seating, tables and accessories can be used in the context of Zones settings, integrated with other Teknion product lines, with technology or on their own, says the company.

Teknion Zones Bench

The Zones Bench won a Gold Best of NeoCon in the Seating: Benches category.

Additional awards for Zones

In addition to the Best of NeoCon and Best of Competition awards, Zones was a HiP Awards Honoree in the Workplace: Seating, Lounge, Collection category in Interior Design magazine’s annual recognition program. Zones was also presented a Metropolis Likes, which recognizes emerging design trends through Metropolis magazine’s social media-based award program.

Fully 93 awards were distributed in the 2016 Best of NeoCon Competition [see FMLink article] of contract furnishing products during NeoCon. A total of 423 products were entered in 43 product and furnishing categories in the competition.

 See more FM-specific Teknion information on the company’s FMLink ad.