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Press Release | Kimball Announces Design Hack Winner

August 30, 2018 - August 31, 2018

Jasper, IN (Aug. 30, 2018) – Kimball, in partnership with Metropolis magazine, would like to congratulate O2U for winning the Kimball Design Hack, a Smart Furniture Design Competition. The competition was open worldwide and received more than 120 submissions during the 4-month competition timeframe with concepts that aimed to improve workplace satisfaction, comfort, engagement, health, wellness, and wellbeing.

You might wonder what a furniture company, magazine and a technology services company have in common? The answer is innovation. In conjunction with the Kimball Design Hack, a Smart Furniture Design Competition, earlier this year Kimball and Metropolis magazine hosted the Office of the Future Hackathon at Globant Seattle. The Hackathon invited engineers, developers and designers to transform the capability of the work place by integrating smart, cutting-edge materials and technologies, showing how the use of technology in furniture and its surroundings can help us be more productive, improve our work lives, make work more convenient, and help us solve other workplace challenges.

A panel of industry experts spanning design, workplace strategy, and consulting reviewed the submissions and after much discussion, one entry rose to the top. “There were many interesting and applicable concepts proposed and it was a tough decision, but ultimately we had to select the entry that would pave the way for a sustainable, healthy future for the workplace,” said Avinash Rajagopal, Editor in Chief of Metropolis

The winning concept brings nature into the workplace through a modular, smart gardening system powered by machine learning for image recognition and IoT sensor technologies, O2U can monitor the growth of small crops or plants, providing a maintenance-free way of integrating biophilic elements into the office while also improving air quality and providing healthy food options.

“As a result of this competition, we have all learned a great deal about how technology might be leveraged to improve the work life balance,” said Jerry Croft, Chief Strategy Officer at Metropolis. “The live Hack gave us the opportunity to see how ‘techies’ would propose to change the workplace—a place where they are the primary target audience and the end users.”

The winning team, O2U, consisted of Dustin Wang, Aldo Torres, Tyler Jong, Eric Hong, Aaron Lim who will win a minimum of $5,000 to be shared and a royalty of up to an additional $25,000 if Kimball puts this concept into production.

“Kimball is proud of our forward-thinking approach to create new value in the workplace. By initiating the Smart Furniture Design Competition and first ever industry Tech Hack, we continue to demonstrate our focus and full commitment to designing solutions that adapt to the needs of the individual, support the organization and enhance the future of work,” concluded Mike Wagner, President of Kimball.

About Kimball
Kimball, one of the most respected environmentally-conscious and forward focused furniture makers, blends state of the art technology with a rich heritage of craft, to better optimize workplace performance and enabling customers to craft a truly authentic brand experience. As a world-class design-driven company, Kimball applies its rich heritage as makers to create environments for tomorrow’s workplace. Kimball is a brand unit of Kimball International, Inc., (NASDAQ:KBAL), a publicly-traded company dedicated to its Guiding Principles and recognized as a highly-trusted company and an employer of choice. Learn how Kimball is changing workspaces by visiting www.kimball.com

About Metropolis
For 35 years, Metropolis has been the architecture and design industry’s most compelling storyteller. Metropolis’s editorial scope spans design at all scales—from products to city planning. Metropolis has always sought out and featured the game changers in the industry, from emerging talent to established individuals and organizations. In addition to the printed magazine, Metropolis delivers the same highly relevant and thought provoking content via metropolismag.com and more than 50 live events each year. Across all channels, Metropolis links design to evolving cultural and societal trends, from big data to resilient cities. Metropolis readers and audiences rely on Metropolis to take them behind the scenes and share innovations, reveal breakthrough processes, and keep them ahead of the curve.

https://www.kimball.com/design/designhack/

JUDGES

James Cava
Head of Global Workplace Solutions
IBM
Armonk, NY

James Cava is Global Head of Workplace Solutions at IBM. He is responsible for all strategic design and construction activities across IBM’s office portfolio encompassing 80 million square feet in 102 countries. He is also responsible for IBM’s Workplace Experience standards.

Previously, James worked at Citigroup where he headed up Global Planning & Design as well as North American project management. James graduated from The Cooper Union where he received his Professional Engineering license in Mechanical Engineering.

Jennifer Fordham
Senior Project Manager
Design & Construction, Group Real Estate
WPP Group USA, Inc.
New York, NY
Jennifer Fordham is a Senior Project Manager for Design and Construction with Group Real Estate at WPP Group USA, Inc. With over 20 years of experience spanning residential architecture, commercial interiors, furniture procurement, facilities management and project management, she continuously seeks to improve upon the design and functionality of the spaces she builds and the products she uses in them.

Jennifer holds a BFA in Interior Design from Syracuse University and was recently awarded the 2017 IFMA Award for Excellence in Facilities Project Planning and Management.

Christopher Hood
Director of Consulting
Advanced Workplace Associates
London, United Kingdom
Christopher Hood is a Director at Advanced Workplace Associates in London, a boutique advisory group specializing in helping organizations though the process of workplace change. Previously, Chris served as Managing Director at CBRE and as Manager of Hewlett Packard’s Design Center.

Trained, and qualified as an Architect, Christopher has often moved outside his formal training to seek bold, innovative solutions in the field of corporate real estate. He has written articles, presented papers at major events, holds a US patent for furniture design, is a past winner of the Corenet Global Innovation Award, and is very active in a number of leading industry thought-leadership and advisory groups.

Katherine Lytle
Senior Designer
IA Interior Architects
New York, NY
Katherine Lytle is a Senior Interior Designer and an Associate in the New York office of IA Interior Architects, an exclusively interiors focused design firm with 19 locations worldwide.

Katherine has 14 years’ experience leading a diverse portfolio of local, national and global projects including Corporate Workplace, Higher Education, Civic, Institutional and Healthcare Design. Katherine’s innovative projects have been featured in multiple industry publications.

Avinash Rajagopal
Editor in Chief
Metropolis Magazine
New York, NY
Avinash Rajagopal is the editor-in-chief of Metropolis magazine. He is an expert on product and interior design in the digital age, as a historian of contemporary design as well as a frequent speaker at key industry events. He is the author of Hacking Design (Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2013) and has contributed to numerous volumes on architecture and design, including Adhocracy (Istanbul Design Biennial, 2012), Making Africa (Vitra Design Museum, 2015) and Atlas of Furniture Design (Vitra Design Museum, forthcoming).

Avinash has lectured on design history and writing at the School of Visual Arts, New York; the University of Texas at Austin; and the National Institute of Design, India.

Kay Sargent
Director of WorkPlace
HOK
Washington, DC
Kay Sargent is a Senior Principal and Director of WorkPlace for Strategic Accounts at HOK, the world’s largest global architectural firm and serves on the Board of Directors. In that role Kay oversees the marketing, delivery and execution of over 65 International Master Service Accounts where the firm provides services for organizations with multiple projects in multiple locations both nationally and internationally.

Kay is considered one of the foremost thought leaders on workplace. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies on their global real estate strategies and designed workplaces of the future. She has authored multiple white papers and articles on a variety of design related topics including wellbeing; next gen workforce; go-bility; technologies impact on the workplace; space fusion and the rise of the human factor.

Mike Wagner
President
Kimball
Jasper, IN
Mike Wagner is President of Kimball. Mike joined Kimball in 2013, when he was asked to lead an extensive turnaround for one of the largest and most diversified furniture manufacturers in the world. Over the past few years, the company has emerged as a design leader, winning major awards, including the prestigious 2015 Interior Design “Best of Year” award for the industry’s largest product category.

Mike has authored articles and spoken at industry events on topics related to market innovation, workplace of the future, and platform thinking. His career spans over 20 years in the furniture industry, including past ownership of a Chicago based Independent Rep firm, as well as several key leadership positions in sales management, marketing, operations and strategic planning.

Russ Whitman
Managing Director
Globant US
Russ Whitman is a Managing Director for Globant US (NYSE: GLOB) an international consulting and technology services firm that powers digital transformation for leading brands though delivering design, technology and innovation at scale. Whitman is responsible for leading Digital Strategy and Innovation for key markets and industries, leveraging his over 20 years in creating digital products at the intersection of art and technology.