Vitra, the Swiss furniture manufacturer and cultural-commercial project, will exhibit at NeoCon 2016, North America’s largest commercial design exposition in Chicago from June 13 – 15. Vitra is collaborating with Lukas Scherrer, the Swiss-born, San Francisco-based industrial designer to present his vision of an authentic design studio. Scherrer explores both the evolution of tech office design – an aesthetic he calls “Silicon Valley Modern” – as well as divergent thinking in the workplace by depicting a creative work culture in action.

Investments in creative capital will provide tomorrow’s companies significant competitive advantages. A creative workspace that physically embodies a creative work culture allows organizations to both attract the next generation of highly sought-after talent, and provide a diverse palette of spaces to support creative exchange in its many forms. Vitra’s Chicago showroom will reference the excitement of the American startup garage – an entrepreneurial creative workspace where calculated risk-taking results in industry-changing disruptive business models.

Moving beyond the well-trodden clichés of Silicon Valley tech-office designs, Vitra will present a crafted work environment utilizing an authentic palette of naturally derived linoleums, plywood of different species, oriented strand board, greenery and sisal. Vitra will present a flexible, adaptive office that enables D.I.Y. reconfiguration to respond to scalability requirements dictated by rapidly evolving business conditions in any industry.

As the locus of work shifts to “third-place” hospitality environments like coffee shops and co-working lounges, coffee culture has become a significant driver in workplace interactions. To explore this evolving nature of work, Vitra will incorporate the Belleville family of chairs and bistro tables into a working café installation.

At NeoCon 2016, the Chicago presentation will display an eclectic layering of Vitra products that blur the traditional distinctions of home, office and public spaces. Iconic classics designed by Jean Prouvé, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames will be layered among contemporary classics by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Jasper Morrison and Antonio Citterio. Vitra’s showroom will be refracted through the prism of the Vitra Color and Material Library, the culmination of ten years of research by Hella Jongerius, Vitra’s Art Director for Colors and Materials.