The Story of Why We Gather

Submitted by Meredith Hurst, Allsteel, Industry IIDA, LEED Green Assoc.

IIDA Georgia Cooper Partner:  AllSteel

We are social beings. We convene, congregate, confer, and collaborate. We come together to discuss, disagree, ideate, share, brainstorm, and solve problems. Sometimes, we want to be heard. Other times, we're there to listen. Large groups and small. Planned and impromptu. We gather when we have a job to do and often, we do it better in the company of others. It's the way work gets done. Because something special happens when we GATHER.

Collaboration isn’t a new way to work. In fact, it happens daily, spontaneously, and throughout the office and beyond. On the way for coffee you bump into a colleague in the hall. You ask a question about a project. The conversation continues, so you lean against the wall. A third person joins, and you scan the area for a place to meet. So we wondered, since collaboration is such an integral part of the way we work, is there a better way to help people come together to collaborate?

As Allsteel began to explore new solutions to make it easier for people to work together outside the individual workspace, it became clear that traditional meeting areas don’t always accommodate the behaviors that happen in them. That spaces are often empty. That even more spaces were inflexible and uninspiring. And, too often, there aren’t enough spaces that invite spontaneous collaboration, or the right kind of spaces aren’t available at all. We found there were few products on the market that naturally and intuitively address the need for interaction and collaboration, and using conventional products wasn’t always the best solution.

So Allsteel seized the opportunity to design a collection of furniture from the ground up to fulfill this unmet need in the marketplace. We set off to create something that everyone needed, but maybe didn’t know they needed. The result is Gather,™ Allsteel’s response to today’s changing demographics, shrinking workstations,and evolving workstyles. Our goal? To redefine the workplace as a destination for people to come together to move ideas and thinking to a new level.  This non-traditional collection of furniture includes a dozen eclectic pieces that offer architects, designers, dealers, workplace strategists, and facilities planners intuitive solutions that accommodate human behaviors and unlimited possibilities to mix and match for a variety of environments and activities.

Learn more about the new Gather Collection from Allsteel at http://www.allsteeloffice.com/2011NewProducts/gather/index.html.