The Leland Post - Spring 2022

THE LELAND POST

A Natural Process

SPRING/SUMMER 2022 PUBLISHED IN GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Ode to Oak P.6

Available in natural and black, the Gemma Collection’s oak veneer is naturally warm, haptic, and relaxed.

The Thinking Behind Gemma P.12

Created by Altherr Désile Park for Leland, the Gemma Collection stands out with elegance and optimistic flair.

Gemma Collection

Versatility should be a natural phenomenon—where something easily and intuitively adapts to a wide range of people and environments.

The Allure of Walnut

P.7 A New Edge on Surfaces

P.8

Color on Birch

P.4 Ode to Oak

The Softer Side of the Gemma Collection

P.6

P.10

STORIES

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Color on Birch

Our organic palette was inspired by elements of nature. And birch is just the wood to make it pop.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, birch was often used for home furnishings and cabinetry.

It’s dense, hard, and has the perfect properties for Leland’s color finishing— a legacy that lives within the Gemma Collection.

The curated colors start with a special iconic green, a leading voice that underlines the vibrant character of the Gemma body, acting almost like another element that completes the rich material spectrum of the collection. The chorus of additional secondary colors connects the collection to the redesign of colors done for the Brand. At the same time, you can spec any color you want. Configure your own story—colorful or informal, natural or refined. That’s the versatility of birch and the commitment of Leland.

THE LELAND POST

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“Keeping with Leland’s expertise in color finishing, we are working together to design richly meaningful color palettes. More than simply choosing nice colors, color design is a substantial part of the project” Altherr Désile Park, Creator of the Gemma Collection

GEMMA COLLECTION

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Ode to Oak

Available in natural and black, the Gemma Collection’s oak veneer is naturally warm, haptic, and relaxed.

Inspiration Outside our Door In color, form, and spirit, the wonders of Michigan show up in our designs. Young, fresh, and contemporary, Gemma’s natural and black tones carry an undeniable sense of density and texture.

Neutral

by Design Neutrality can help knit a space together. It lets the colors around it speak the loudest. As a more premium finish, oak doesn’t demand attention. It’s more subtle, yet stunning when you start paying attention.

Created by Altherr Désile Park for Leland, the Gemma Collection stands out with personable elegance and optimistic flair. Bigger than a specific inspiration, Gemma was created from a broader desire to open a new path for Leland, keeping mid-century American values of optimism, expressiveness, and industrial experimentation as a foundation, while looking towards the future.

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

THE LELAND POST

The Allure of Walnut With wide-ranging possibilities, walnut is the most premium version of the Gemma Collection chair.

“Walnut’s elegant grain exudes mid-century sensibility and highlights Gemma’s soft curves.”

Altherr Désile Park

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A Premium Addition

Leaving a Legacy

The Gemma Collection’s walnut option is different than its birch or oak counterparts—elegant and more upscale. More than a choice of material, walnut dresses Gemma up for premium spaces. Picture a lawyer’s office, museum, or cocktail lounge.

While birch and oak are modern and fresh, walnut is more serious, sophisticated, and sumptuous. Its deep texture is known to be extremely durable and lasts a lifetime, and only gets better with age.

PRODUCT

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Functional and versatile.

Effortless and easy to use.

Delightfully welcoming in every way.

Right for Any Technology Occasion that Feels Soft Whether it’s charging a laptop or sipping a cocktail, more is happening in lounge spaces where people retreat for work, conversation, or entertainment. And the Gemma Collection tables are there, encouraging them to plug in or unplug completely.

A New Edge on Surfaces

Technology can often feel hard and non-human. But the Gemma Collection is soft and intuitive. The totem option has USB power, but carefully wrapped into the design. And the height-adjustable version raises to comfortable heights, meeting a person – or people – in the moment.

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“We think of furniture as the interface between the people and the architecture.

Making objects more human. You don’t see the machinery, just the humanity.”

Altherr Désile Park

PRODUCT

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The Softer Side of the Gemma Collection Ideal for low-key spaces, the Gemma Stitch Lounge Chair is architectural softness, defined for today.

THE LELAND POST

SPRING/SUMMER 2022

11 Loungeworthy Geometry Gemma Stitch Lounge Chair adds a welcome visual contrast to the Gemma Collection. It’s soft, voluminous, and inviting while echoing sensibilities from the rest of the collection, meaning it can be mixed, matched, and still maintain visual synergy.

A Strapping Addition Adding the optional strap to the Gemma Stitch Lounge Chair turns any space into a flexible zone. Pull one over and join a group. Take one over to a nearby table. There isn’t an instruction manual, and that’s the fun part.

“As with the Gemma chair, this fully upholstered lounge balances between softness and tension, organic and architectural, and working and relaxing.”

Altherr Désile Park

PROCESS

Gemma was created from a broader desire to open a new path for Leland, and the design process fulfilled that desire from the start.

Numerous models and prototypes were built over months to arrive at a collection infused with design and personality in every curve, angle, surface, and color.

The Thinking Behind the Gemma Collection

SPRING/SUMMER 2021

THE LELAND POST

Organic in Every Way Altherr Désile Park sought to create a forward-facing design that brings together modernist American design, Leland’s Midwestern origins, and European design.

The end goal was to create a simple – not to be confused with simplistic – aesthetic.

The collection’s friendly, quiet contours convey craft, warmth, and optimism without shouting.

“The broad spectrum of materials – from color on birch to timeless oak to a sophisticated walnut – mirrors Leland’s commitment to partner with the A&D Community” Altherr Désile Park

Meet the Designers Altherr Désile Park is the evolution of the longstanding Barcelona-based studio Lievore Altherr. The studio specializes in product design & development, strategic consulting, creative direction, art direction, and ephemeral architecture for internationally recognized design companies.

Their approach develops projects using an established strategy: a creative concept integrating product design and its communication. This holistic approach, humanist character, and the search for the essential in their projects – combined with a sensibility that transmits harmony and balance – characterize the designs of Altherr Désile Park.

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STORIES

14 These days distinctions between educational furniture and office furniture are actually no longer valid.

K12 Environments

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“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

John Dewey

Learning Spaces

Changing Roles

Today there’s less need to divide furniture into categories of ‘institutional’ or ‘corporate’ and preconceived ideas about classroom furniture vs. breakout furniture are becoming less relevant.

As with the modern workplace, the modern school in our knowledge economy is essentially a place with the same purpose for fostering inquiry and embedding knowledgecapture and exchange.

Whether it be a school or an office, the key requirement is for a collage of space-types that accommodate a diversity of learning styles as well as addressing a spectrum of sensibilities for inclusiveness.

In addition to supporting superior programs, new teaching methodologies and the encouragement of certain behaviors, Leland’s K12 furniture possesses nuances of materials and colors that serve to enhance both the levels of student engagement and their joy of learning.

With so much emphasis on technology in schools today it is critical that it is implemented with the intention of enhancing educator-facilitated learning, and not substituting for it.

Therefore beyond producing new technological tools there is the necessary focus on designing new classroom models that properly take advantage of what these tools can do. With that we must be careful that the furniture does not shape or limit the teaching and learning – does it work for what we know about learning today, or only for what we know from the past?

At Leland we ask: what should learning spaces feel like? We see our furniture as a strategic investment that will reflect an educational institution’s culture and identity. We know it should create an inclusive environment, but we also want to enable one that brings joy. Leland sees furniture as a new pedagogy to promote engagement, health and well-being, and choice, so desks, chairs, tables and other furnishings cannot be afterthoughts, chosen at the end of the process after all the other design decisions are made.

Leland Furniture 5695 Eagle Dr SE Grand Rapids, MI 49512 lelandfurniture.com

PROJECT & PEOPLE

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Copywriting: Adam Barr Design: clasebcn.com Product Images Art Direction: ladpstudio.eu Photography: Studio DVDP & Marina Denisova

A Family Affair Marcel Breuer’s famed 1967 building in New Haven, CT is the first Passive House design hotel in the US.

A Building for the Future The former HQ of the Armstrong Rubber Company in New Haven, Connecticut, designed by modernist architect Marcel Breuer in 1967 has been transformed by architect and developer Bruce Redman Becker and branding and interior design firm Dutch East Design. Its new purpose is a unique 165-room hotel, the first hospitality project in the US designed as a net-zero energy building, generating 100% of its own electricity, heat and hot water with a rooftop solar array and solar parking canopies.

The ninth-floor events space mixes comfort, design and functionality, all within the portfolio of sustainability.

Contributing to this are the Mass chairs from Leland, a chair that comprises 100% pre-industrial and postindustrial recycled content.

The light-weight and small footprint of this high-density stack chair is perfectly suited to transporting them between the various floors.

Mass Chair

Heather Miller is a walking database of Leland knowledge. You’d be hardpressed to find an employee who can rattle off an answer any quicker. But the most important fact Heather knows? It’s all about family.

When Heather arrived at Leland 11 years ago, it was very much a family operation.

All four members of founder Tim Korzon’s family were involved in the business.

At the time, Heather was mothering two stepchildren, and went on to provide foster care for another five children.

Eventually, Heather and her husband adopted Blake, Hunter, and Mikey—two of whom have special needs.

Over the years, Leland’s family operation mentality didn’t wane.

Between the never-ending to-dos of being a mom, Heather worked as a Customer Service Manager, and was truly grateful for the ‘people first’ culture that the Korzon family established— and sustained. “The support I’ve received at Leland has made my own family possible, with the Leland community being an extended blended family,” Heather says.

Now a proud grandmother, Heather is still showing her love in so many ways.

She’s donated over six feet of her hair in the last decade, twelve inches at a time, for the making of wigs for young children with cancer.

Heather is proof that Leland isn’t all about furniture.

As much, it’s about family.

It was and will always be.