Dezeen Magazine

Allsteel's Experience Center reimagines the role of the contract furniture showroom

Promotion: workplace furniture brand Allsteel's latest showroom in Chicago is designed to showcase its latest products and share new workplace concepts  through architectural features and experiences.

Designed by Partners by Design and located in the Fulton Market district in Chicago, the 24,000-square-foot Experience Center houses more than 150 products by Allsteel, Gunlocke, HBF, HBF Textiles, Normann Copenhagen, Zilenzio and Corral arranged across various workspace environments.

Allsteel's showroom featuring a wooden dome
Allsteel's Experience Centre is based in Chicago

Functioning like neighbourhoods, these workspaces were designed to reflect evolving work behaviours with spaces for working together, apart, or somewhere in between.

They include micro-collaborative spaces within the larger environments, an executive retreat space, an all-day cafe, an open-concept lounge area designed to feel like an extension of the outdoors and a lab where customers can test products and materials first-hand.

Allsteel's showroom workspace featuring people working at a table
The Experience Centre showcases its latest products

Allsteel said that its Experience Center was a move away from a traditional showroom format – where the only function is to showcase product – towards a place for education, inspiration and collaboration.

"We wanted to design a place that would celebrate and encourage collaboration, be a destination for education and inspiration, be an experience for our clients trying to solve meaningful workplace challenges and transform their ways of working," said Allsteel's director of brand and marketing Natalie Johansen Murray.

People working in the Experience Centre's cafe
The brand aims for the Experience Centre to be a place for encouragement and collaboration

"We partnered and consulted with a wide range of local and national designers and creative visionaries to bring this space to life," Johansen Murray continued.

"Each of our partners along the journey really challenged us to reimagine the role of a traditional contract furniture showroom – pushing us to explore and bring forward new architectural features and experiences."

Products incorporated range from a flexible kit-of-parts that enable office layouts to be easily extended or adapted along with the needs of a growing business to a collection of accessories inspired by the traditional Shaker rail-and-peg system that allows workers to store and display objects that express their individuality.

People working at a desk
The brand aims for its Experience Centre to be a place for education, inspiration and collaboration

Allsteel welcomed partners, clients and industry leaders to the new showroom for the first time at this year's Fulton Market Design Days from 12 to 14 June 2023.

"We are thrilled to open our doors and welcome our clients, the design community and commercial real estate professionals to our new Experience Center," said Johansen Murray.

"Throughout the entire design journey, we focused on developing a space to celebrate and encourage collaboration, a space that is designed to help our clients and design community do more."

Allsteel's showroom/ experience centre featuring a bar
Allsteel said that its Experience Center is a move away from a traditional showroom format

The Allsteel Experience Center is located at 345 N Morgan, third floor, Fulton Market District, Chicago, IL 60607. Take a 360-degree tour of the Experience Center or visit Allsteel's website for more information.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Allsteel as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.