International Fair for Office & Objects

Some personal impressions of the fair Orgatec in Cologne I would like to share. I did not see revolutionary new office solutions, some sound-absorbing partition walls were presented almost on every booth. A few clever solutions for mobile desks, like nomad from mobica+, were interesting. The well known suppliers like USM, Wilkahn, Vitra were disappointing.

New lighting solutions were missing. Of course you could see some task lights or floor luminaires with LED, but nothing not yet seen on the Light & Building this year. The impression was that manufactures of office solutions and lighting manufactures haven’t talked together so far. Very poor solutions were reddish and blueish task lights (4th photo second row) and a one-person-office with a twilight background illumination which certainly not fulfilled any lighting standards for office work places (3rd photo second row).

The most interesting thinks I saw were ergonomic (active) office chairs like swopper and chairs with sound, i.e. beatnik (1st photo 3rd row) and sonic-chair (2nd photo 3rd row), showing integration of different technology into (office) furniture. Unfortunately too expensive. Some curiosities, not really in combination with offices, were strange italian shoes (last photo) and a long-lasting notebook with chalk (4th photo 1st row).