WHAT
Furniture is often the last element we pull together, but it is one of the most important. It’s what you rest on at the end of a long day, or where you sit to have a meal with your family. For this project, we started with the furniture and then planned the architecture. Beginning with the human experience, we built the environment around how the space is used. When the arches were put in to plan, we knew exactly what the views would be. We used the architecture to compliment and showcase Hightower’s furniture pieces.

WHO
We believe that the story of a space is just as important as the design and the objects that go in to it – it all plays in to the experience. Hightower CEO and founder, Natalie Hartkoph, waited ten years before the perfect showroom became available at the Chicago Merchandise Mart. When she signed the lease for her first ever showroom, she had 5 short months until Neocon. She enlisted Casework to bring it all together.

WHY
To do this, we created a variety of moments, spots to sit and rest your feet from walking all day, a bar to grab a drink and relax, a place that invites people to charge their phones and sit with friends for a moment of reprieve. Arches were paired with upside down arches to create vignettes into other rooms. We brought the focus back to female businesses with wallpaper installations by Chicago artist Laura Berger, Portland company Juju Papers, as well as artwork by female artists.