Sustainable Office Furniture

Put a cork in it!

Monday, June 21, 2010 by Cate Rohrig

Now you won’t find this design in a catalog, but you will see it on the Tangram Studio website, because Studio designers are constantly trying to come up with innovative office design ideas and concepts that will blow your mind. Now I am not saying this is mind blowing, but I will say I am pretty sure it hasn’t been done before.

Typically we see cork in wine bottles and most recently in commercial flooring. I have taken this material and applied it to what I think is an innovative application. Without applying any resin or filler to it, I have simply applied it to a plexi panel in its raw tile form and created an interesting tack panel. Cork is becoming a popular green material and according to an Ecolect post they believe Cork Mosaic is the forward-looking green material for modern architectural surfaces. These tiles are recycled from the cork stopper industry’s by-product and they come in 1 inch diameter tiles, which is plenty of room for your typical pin or tack! Cork Mosaic in this Penny Round style is perfect for walls and floors (or even tack panels) and is water resistant.

Now I am not certain that the water resistance is a necessary need for office interiors solutions but it doesn’t hurt to know that your tack panel can handle a good in-office water fight! And while one can duck behind their privacy panel in a water brawl and be safe from water damage, they can also be assured their office is helping in the fight to keep our earth green by using sustainable office furniture panels such as these - panels only Tangram Studio can provide! I look forward to the client who shares a love of this cork concept as much as I do, so I can see this concept come to life one day.

Tangram Studio - New Website

Thursday, May 13, 2010 by Lindsey Sage

We finally have a fantastic website that displays what we are all about! Tangram Studio has done so much over the past years on the design and engineering side of our business that the old website wasn’t reflecting all the great work that had been done!

We NOW have images of completed work, work in progress, and even our conceptual office design ideas! Find out how truly talented our Team is and be sure to read about our environmental mission, including how we focus on using sustainable office furniture in every project! You are sure to find our Approach like no other…our meticulous attention to detail and passion for innovation stand us apart from our competition!

We’re excited to display our work on this fabulously visual website with the same integrity as our work is designed and engineered!

Enjoy!

Text "YES"

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 by Joanne Fischer

This is my favorite time of year! The days are longer, the weather is mild and wedding invitations/graduations announcements make their way to me.

One announcement in particular made me smile….

A few years ago I met Cate when she came to interview for an intern position at Tangram Interiors. She was earnest, enthusiastic, and kooky with a good sense of design…and in the first five minutes she convinced me that we needed her as much as she needed us. During her time in our design department, she fit in well and happily completed every task we requested.

As Cate progressed, she came to realize that commercial interior design and designing office space was not for her. Fortunately, she fell in love with designing custom office furniture, and all that our Tangram Studio team has to offer. One quick change of major at CSULB (is there such a thing?) and she was on her way. She’s been helping Studio design sustainable and locally manufactured office furniture ever since.

Cate’s graduation announcement was on my desk this morning…with a note…text “YES” if I am coming…

Congratulations Cate!!!!

Planful

Thursday, April 1, 2010 by Nick Greenko

What would Brian Boitano do if he was here right now?
He'd make a plan and he'd follow through, that's what Brian Boitano'd do.
-Trey Parker and Matt Stone, from South Park: The Movie

(Click for YouTube Video)

So, I was having this dialogue with my wife the other night as we were watching What Would Brian Boitano Make? on Food Network over dinner. What a scream. Love the energy. Anyway, she is a psychologist, and we razz each other back and forth about the buzzwords in our respective professions. So when I told her that the South Park song is all about being planful, she was in my face about it being a made-up word, and a pretentious one at that.

Well, planful, intentional, organized, prepared, whatever. But she’s right, it’s not in the dictionary. However, it IS in the Urban Dictionary. I quote:

"Beers on the weekend?"
"Sounds planful."

I rest my case. On the etymology. But now, let’s get to the underlying meaning and application.

You know the phrase, “fail to plan, plan to fail”. However nauseating that might sound, it works. I do like the word intentional better. Intention, like in the context of practicing Yoga, where you decide what outcome you’d like to achieve. And then, your practice evolves around that intention.

I know some who would rather wing it, and hesitate to commit to a goal. However, when you articulate a goal, and actually apply it to yourself, there is a power that is unleashed. Suddenly it becomes more clear, more defined. It went from a wish to a step closer to reality. You might even get what you asked for.

In our office furnishings dealership, we just underwent training by the Miller-Heiman organization on Strategic Selling. Basically, that entire process is one of creating a sale out of a mere idea, and lays out numerous steps of discipline to get there. So at the start of the process there was a name and lots of blanks or red flags. Questions to answer. The first of which is about the opportunity itself. Does it include a need for sustainable office furniture? Commercial flooring? Interactive whiteboards maybe? At the end of the process, a sale, a relationship, a customer or all three. What created that result was planfulness.

A little less than a month after we got married, my wife’s birthday came along. So I asked her what she wanted and she said ‘nothing’. I have since learned, after some 26 years of practice, ‘nothing’ indicated that I was a moron to even have asked, since I should have been observing all along and if I really loved her I would have already known what she wanted. And gotten it for her. Without asking. Like she does for me. Ouch.

Well, back then I took her literally, and got her nothing for her birthday. Seriously. A card, some flowers, dinner, but nothing else. Needless to say, it was a disaster of epic proportion, and it took me the entire following weekend of shopping and groveling to get things back on track. So I asked her at the end of it, “why didn’t you just tell me what you wanted?”. She said, “Well, I’ll know what I want when I don’t get it.” So there it is.

Behind every complaint is a request. How can we unearth that request and then get planful about meeting it? This applies to customers, employees, bosses (especially bosses) and significant others. The first part of the solution is to bypass the emotional trip of buying into the complaint, being intimidated by it, or worse, taking it personally. Skip that part. The second part is to set the intention to fulfill the request, if you intend to, and get planful on how to fulfill it. BTW, more on the first part soon!

So what does planful look like for you? Is there that lingering elusive goal you are hesitating to go after? Is doing things the same way not getting you the results you want? Time to get planful. Start by declaring the goal, then setting some action steps, however far-fetched. But keep the goal out there. Speak it out loud. Write it in your calendar, or put it as a to-do in your Outlook Task List. This will start your inner dialogue about how you will accomplish it. Tell yourself that you plan to achieve it. Then start planning.

Brian Boitano might, “kick an ass or two” in seeing the plan through, you know. It starts with the intention, moves to the plan, and then is a matter of following through with determination.

So instead of whining and complaining about why I am 20 pounds heavier than I want to be, I declared a fitness goal (if I were really a hero, I would have set a time limit too, but first things first). Then, I wasn’t sure what to do differently, so I chose the South Beach Diet. That would be the planful part. Today is day 12 and I am down 7 pounds from the day I started. Yesterday, I started back to Bikram Yoga, and the plan there is to do it twice a week. Then, weights, three times a week, hitting all body parts. Not going crazy, but realizing that if I want results, I might get them if I were planful.

And stick to the plan. More later.

Architectural Tour of Los Angeles

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Lindsey Sage

Out in front of The Palm, cool wind in our hair
The crisp smell of Los Angeles, rising up in the air.

Mitchel being Mitchel, me on the phone while Debra's grabbing ice
Who knew at that point anything would turn out so fabulously nice.

Off to LA Live we went, checking out a pimped out suite
Frantically setting up...the crowd getting back we're trying to beat!

Justin Weiss fluently speaking on LA's past, present and future
While having a glass of wine, there isn't much it can't cure!

Passing buildings left and right, wondering...
Who might need custom office furniture this fine night?

'Round the corner, best french dip at Cole's (who knew)
Or if you're feeling extra feisty, go through the secret door to tip a few.

Rabbit, Buffalo, Rattlesnake...
How many exotic sausages can Wurstkuche make?

At the end of the day...who has the best time?
TangramStudio of course...
On top of creating sustainable office furniture,
they share their stories with a rhyme!

Do you have a tale to tell or favorite spot in Los Angeles? Share them with us in the comments below!

A love affair with felt.

Monday, February 8, 2010 by Charlotte Wiederholt

KPCC was a project that started long ago in the world of custom office furniture. It was four years ago when I first attended a meeting at the architecture firm, Chu + Gooding. When I arrived at their office I could barely concentrate on the task at hand due to the lollapalooza of interesting mock-ups, posters, magazine images and samples that adorned the walls of their studio. I may have appeared distracted or come across as rude, but it was a feast for the eyes and mind.

We had been asked to their fabulous office to discuss the development of custom workstations for a new space in Pasadena to be occupied by the public radio station, 89.3 KPCC. The architect, Annie, was looking to create a space with "non-cubicle" and "non-corporate" looking workstations and sustainable office furniture. She and I began sketching and talking about materials, the space itself and how the client wanted their space to function.

On the back wall of the studio there was the most perfect triangular piece of white wool felt pinned to the wall. She mentioned that she had come across the felt while in Norway. Ahh, inspiration! I mentioned that we at TangramStudio were having a love affair with felt. After all, what's not to love about a warm, textural material that is made from recycled sweaters? The question then became - how could we use this sublime, natural, acoustical, tack-able and environmentally friendly material? Since it feels somewhat warm like a blanket, we immediately thought about wrapping the panels with it. We designed a panel wrap that would wrap from under the surface, up around the top to create a soft, radiused top cap.

As we worked our way through the design concept, Annie pushed for a creative way to combine the functional items required in a workstation. The client had requested overhead cabinets. These usually end up creating an oppressive, heavy datum line that dominates the space. So to reduce this effect, we designed the spine panels so that our installation crew could install the overheads at random, varying heights. This created an undulating cityscape appearance in the space.

All of these design elements seemed easy except for the felt panels. How were we to affix the felt to the panel? What kind of felt...neddled or felted? How thick...F-7 or f-15? How should it be cut...water jet, laser or saw? Luckily, there is a felt mill close by our office (we strive to use locally manufactured office furniture whenever possible). After three wrong turns and two phone calls, we found the non-descript building that housed all of the answers we were looking for. Inside was every imaginable felt available. Rolls after rolls, 6 inches high to 96 inches high. There were all of the colors - white, grey, green (for lizard cages), dark grey (for trunk liners).

There were multiple rounds of gluing, cutting and stretching of the felt until we had a material that could slide into a track/frame system. The end result involved the felt being bolted to the metal panels. This also added to the sustainability of the new workstations. If the felt would to become soiled, it could be removed by simply removing four bolts and pulling it off the panel. This way, the felt could be sent back to the mill and placed in the hopper for recycling.

Our love affair with felt continues...

Felt Prototyping

Friday, December 11, 2009 by Charlotte Wiederholt

I just got back to the Studio from an afternoon of prototyping felt tack panels at our upholsterer. For one of our current custom office furniture projects, the architect has a desire to create interior tack panels with horizontal stripes.

The inspiration comes from a British carpet manufacturer. They offer a line of thick, nubby, horizontal-striped carpet. It's really quite beautiful.

So how do we replicate a similar feel within the custom workstations? The architect suggested wicking felt, stacked horizontally. We attempted to sew 1/2" diameter wicking felt tubes to a felt backer. It was a bit like trying to squeeze a bubble. Needless to say, we had to go in an alternate direction.

However, felt has a great warm textural feel. We love felt! It's a "green" material (sustainable office furniture is something that we always try to incorporate into our projects) that has this fantastic organic/industrial/warm feeling all in one. Who would have thought all of that would be possible in one material? So I stopped by our felt vendor in Placentia (locally manufactured office furniture is another key to Studio projects) to obtain several sheets of felt.

Now, how could we take plain, flat felt sheets and begin to fold and sew them to create depth and pattern? There are so many options and possibilities when it comes to sewing: the manipulation of the felt sheets, the stitching, layering of strips - all interesting and full of possibilities.

We arrived at a possible solution. Gustavo, the factory manager, refurbishes old vintage cars. He suggested we treat the felt panels like vintage car seats - curved, detailed stitching, piping - picture a 1959 Impala or a 1965 Falcon. We landed on a 3/4" diameter piping strip stacked horizontally with a felt cover. Gustavo and I set out to the sewing machines to see if this would work. By horizontally stacking the piping and stitching it between two layers of felt I think we have a close facsimile to the British carpet!

Do you have a project that you are trying to incorporate something unique into? Let TangramStudio know - we would love to co-create something with you for your office design layout!