Especially its new Education showroom, home to HON’s groundbreaking new scholastic product line, SmartLink™, a durable, flexible, tech-centric solution for today’s contemporary classroom. Despite only opening in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart on June 9, 2008—just in time for the start of this year’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair—HON’s education showroom can already add award-winning to its burgeoning list of accolades. Indeed, it took home the Best of NeoCon Silver Award for Education Solutions, as well as Buildings magazine’s Grand Prize for Workplace Flexibility solutions.
“Today’s classrooms demand holistic furniture solutions that are fluid, flexible and adapt to new technologies, different teaching styles, various subject matters, age levels and increasing student numbers,” says Jim Cahill, HON’s vice president of systems and education. “Born out of findings from the responses of teachers, principals, administrators, students and designers through meticulous research, HON is launching a comprehensive, interrelated suite of classroom furniture.”
Designed by the renowned Chicago firm SmithGroup, the showroom is set up so that visitors entering the showroom see an interactive classroom from the teacher’s perspective. This means that the mobile teacher station—a durable, adaptable piece of furniture providing ample work and storage space—overlooks a cluster of non-handed, adjustable student desks situated in four-person group pods and also individually. Additionally, the left side wall of the “classroom” is divided into three bays that are activated by HON’s SmartLink wall rail system and modular storage components. Taken in its entirety, the showroom aptly conveys the core messaging of the SmartLink solution: adaptability, durability, organization and technological flexibility.
“Traditionally, school districts were forced to work with multiple vendors to outfit a classroom with all of the necessary furnishings and storage components. This process could be exhausting, as well as extremely difficult to integrate different brands into a cohesive look,” Cahill explains. “HON’s new single-line solution solves this problem by seamlessly tying all components together to provide a highly adaptable, productive classroom environment. It’s a smart solution for every classroom.”
So smart, in fact, the showroom is outfitted with packs of Smarties—but those, of course, are sold separately.