Widgets & Stone directed the full scale redesign of the Mannington Commercial Showroom in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago for the third year in a row. The designs showcase new products in a visually exciting and memorable way, both on the floor and in wall displays.
This year’s showroom design was based on the theme of the “Next Big Thing” being “A Million Little Things” – so displays took the form of thousands of 2-inch squares (covered with Mannington's products and colors), each making up a single big image. The STYLIST collection drew inspiration from fashion, so a large image of Debbie Harry (photographed by Steven Meisel) was used. The Connected collection drew inspiration from the Brooklyn Bridge; Design Local used an image of one of the three cities participating, Philadelphia; other displays were simple images or even symbols.
This year’s showroom design was based on the theme of the “Next Big Thing” being “A Million Little Things” – so displays took the form of thousands of 2-inch squares (covered with Mannington's products and colors), each making up a single big image. The STYLIST collection drew inspiration from fashion, so a large image of Debbie Harry (photographed by Steven Meisel) was used. The Connected collection drew inspiration from the Brooklyn Bridge; Design Local used an image of one of the three cities participating, Philadelphia; other displays were simple images or even symbols.
The pixel effect proved quite a delight as viewers in person could not always get far enough away to make out the full image. However, as soon as they took out a phone or a camera to photograph it, the image became immediately visible on the digital display screen.
Below are scenes from a few weeks of fabrication and production of Mannington Commercial’s Neocon showroom displays. Design Director Mandy Meredith hatched the idea to make wall-sized showroom art out of 2-inch square “pixels” of flooring products. While it seemed like a relatively straightforward design idea, the actual execution proved to be a huge undertaking.
Led by Jason Meyer and Ray Padron, Range Projects brought a team of over thirty fabricators and installers together to create the eight wall displays. The pieces, sized 11 ft wide and 5-7 ft high were made up of over 9,000 pixel-squares, ranging in depths of 0 inches, up to 1.5 inches.
All kinds of Mannington flooring surfaces were applied to the displays — carpet, tile, rubber, vinyl, etc — along with images, type and colors. Each large pixel display creates a single unified image relating to specific products, materials and collections.
Design Direction/Art Direction: Mandy Meredith; Designers: Amy Trumbull, Ben Dicks, Kerry O’Connor, Paul Rustand; Fabrication/Design-Build: Range Projects.
