Furnishings Go to Work in This Functional Showroom

A good showroom should not only display available products for customers, it should also help them envision how the pieces can be used in their own space. At its Minneapolis office, furnishings dealer Parameters, which sources products from manufacturer Knoll and shares the office with the company, elevated the traditional showroom model by turning its own workspace into a functional demonstration of its product offerings.

The 16,000-square-foot space simultaneously serves as an office for the location’s 18 total employees across both companies and an integrated showroom where clients and designers can interact with products and materials. Customers can experience the products themselves during working sessions at the office, seeing and trying out the furniture as its used in an actual office setting.

In a traditional showroom, products are often just staged in numerous sample formats, which isn’t always the most effective way to engage with the offerings, according to Betsy Vohs, founder and principal of Minneapolis design firm Studio BV.

“From a client's perspective, going to that space can actually be more confusing than not, because you’re seeing a bifurcated, overlapping look of how furniture could potentially be used instead of looking at everything as a system or a landscape,” she said. “When a client is going through a big change [or redesign], they really want to experience what, for example, a smaller workstation would actually feel like, so we wanted to make it a tool that could provide that [environment] for the end user.”

The Knoll showroom is arranged with different types of workspaces, including small 8-by-10 foot offices, a common size in contemporary offices, according to Studio BV, and uses 6-by-6 foot workstations with benching configurations to show multiple layouts of the same product to demonstrate to clients how the products can be arranged to meet their needs.

The goal was to serve as a client-oriented space first and foremost, focusing on creating workspace that was about use and function instead of visual placement — the opposite of the typical design showroom approach, said Vohs.

“We were thinking longer-term than just highlighting the products themselves. This space should be a platform for client engagement and [for] showing them how they can work differently. So, it didn’t really matter what the exact product was, we were looking first at experience and function to drive the design plan,” said Vohs. “It was important to tell the story of Knoll’s and Parameter’s products by showing how they would invest in their own space the same way they would a client’s. They’re walking the walk.”

Studio BV found innovative ways to use Knoll’s textiles throughout the space to create a warm and welcoming environment. Upon entering the space, workers or visitors are greeted by a comfortable living room-style lounge with rich colors from the walnut bookcase, cork-padded walls from Knoll, copper paneling, and leather-wrapped door handles.

Blue velvet, mid-century modern womb chairs designed by Knoll offer comfortable seating in a main conference room.

“We wanted to engage their products at every level and use them in new ways. Almost everything is an installation or an example of what their portfolio can do for a client,” said Vohs.

The main lounge also includes marble coffee bars and green-wrapped café-style booth seating. Meeting areas with textiles and material samples offer a place for hands-on meetings with clients and designers.

A crucial point of the office is the large conference room with moveable walls, where the team would host large workshops or educational seminars and classes, fitting up to 50 people.

“Overall, we created a really dynamic and functional space where people really want to work. [As a designer], you could spend half a day there with your client and get a lot of your project done right there. It’s a place to work through plans, and find solutions,” said Vohs, who works directly with clients in the Parameters office and has used the meeting space during the pandemic to accommodate large, socially-distanced meetings.

Flexibility was a key aspect of the design for Knoll in its workspace, as the company had a 10-year lease and wanted to be able to adapt its business over that period.

“The furniture business is a moving target. Ten years ago, Knoll had a typical showroom. So much has changed in that time, so we knew we had to build in dynamic flexibility that would allow them to be successful in that space over time,” said Vohs.

Installing demountable walls to section off most of the office was the foundation of creating a versatile space, allowing the team to easily open up spaces or create smaller rooms as necessary. Almost all the workspaces throughout the office are sectioned off with moveable walls that allow for on-demand change.

Little did the teams know when they completed the space in June 2019 how crucial those elements would be when adapting to changing work needs during the coronavirus pandemic. Vohs said the team has been back working in shifts in its office since June 2020. The demountable walls that originally allowed the company to accommodate more people for events and education sessions later opened up the space to create airflow and enable employees to maintain appropriate social distances so they felt safe and comfortable coming to work.

“Think about even one year ago, pre-pandemic — we were doing a lot of benching and open plans, and now most companies will want larger workstations and more walls,” said Vohs. “That change is because of the pandemic which we couldn’t have predicted, but their space can accommodate that change.”

The pandemic, and its unprecedented disruption of the nation’s work style and office use, has made having flexible, dynamic workspaces necessary moving forward.

“Flexibility is the key to all good design at this point. There are so many unknowns, and [no one] has a crystal ball,” said Vohs. “The best we as designers can do is provide a landscape for change for our clients, that feels good and can work for them. We did that with the showroom, and I think that that's a testament to good design — to be able to say, ‘we couldn’t have predicted this, but it’s still working.’”