NeoCon 2025: Experience Design & Innovation

The workplace continues to evolve—shaped by how, where, and why people work. At NeoCon 2025, Haworth invited attendees to meet at the intersection of people and space. Guests discovered our approach to design and how we innovate to support the ever-changing workplace. Throughout our spaces, visitors explored 7 unique, curated experiences.

1. Elevating Hospitality through Design

Hospitality reflects your brand and culture. By thoughtfully designing active spaces that foster connection, you can enhance the hospitality experience for both employees and visitors. The reception area or lobby—being where people first physically interact with your company—is one of the most impactful spaces to consider. Attention to design and hospitality here exemplifies the organization’s desired experience. It’s a reflection of a company’s values and brand, and it provides grounding space for all who enter.

Cafés and outdoor areas encourage people to connect and recharge. These spaces promote well-being, engagement, and spontaneous conversations, enticing employees to come to the office and intriguing visitors.

At NeoCon, Haworth showcased hospitality, and guests joined us for a cup of coffee in our café or enjoyed time outside on the River Park Plaza, experiencing how hospitality can change the way people felt at work.

2. Experience the Power of Our Brands

At Haworth, we believe great spaces empower people to thrive and work their best. With a heritage in the workplace, Haworth is the founding brand of the Haworth Group, which includes the world’s greatest brands and iconic products.

Through our breadth of these culturally diverse brands, Haworth delivers variety and choice for the commercial work environment. With our knowledge gained across industries, we brought this craft and expertise to the NeoCon event. Attendees discovered more about our brands in The MART lobby, our showroom, outside on the River Park Plaza, or by visiting our brands webpage.

3. Designing for Sustainability

Our NeoCon showroom featured a new dedicated area showcasing a variety of our innovative solutions that help make the world better—one of our core company values. The overall message and artistic illustrations highlighted our impact and told the story of our sustainability strategy, focused on people, the circular economy, and operational performance.

The space featured some of our most sustainable products and the stories behind them. Highlights included:

• Fern chair – The first in the industry to use a closed-loop manufacturing process. Several of its black plastic parts are continuously recycled and reused, eliminating waste and reducing carbon emissions.
• Alder Lounge Table – Designed by Patricia Urquiola, this nature-inspired table is crafted from biodegradable material consisting of coffee or wood waste and plastic derived from sugarcane.
• Breck chair – A simple and smartly designed chair that has the smallest carbon footprint of all our chairs—just 60 kg CO₂e—and made with over 50% recycled content.

At Haworth, we have a genuine, company-wide commitment to build a better future through sustainable practices and are dedicated to lead in innovative solutions that make a positive impact.

4. Experience Ergonomic Seating

NeoCon attendees experienced the ergonomics, sustainability, performance, and choice of Haworth task chairs—designed for the different ways people work, the postures they prefer, and the workspaces they rely on every day. Our legacy in performance seating was rooted in the relentless work of our ergonomic experts, decades of independent research, and ongoing, rigorous testing.

We don’t just follow industry standards—we define them. We push beyond expectations to create seating that does more than support you. It elevates the way you work, focus, and create. Visitors explored our seating display at NeoCon to find the perfect chair.

5. Inside the Materials Lab: Texture, Color, and Purpose

Our design philosophy for materials and finishes keep things simple, truthful, sustainable, innovative, and integral to the product. From expressive to restrained, space furnishings need to balance our busy world with human values. Material, color, and finish selections create a link that maintains that balance.

Haworth’s carefully curated material offering gives customers the freedom to craft spaces that represent their brand, values, and culture—transforming environments where people live, work, and play. Our goal is to combine our visual and tactile world with function, intention, environmental stewardship, and human values. We featured our material strategy—across our brands—in the Materials Lab area of our NeoCon showroom.

Our Materials Lab also featured 3 new fabrics: Hideaway, Vista, and Moondance. These fabrics are designed to work harmoniously with each other and seamlessly integrate with our current textile offerings. They boast sustainability and performance attributes that meet market needs without compromising on beauty, texture, or color. 

6. Reimagining Workspaces for Focus, Collaboration, & Well-Being

The workplace now and in the future must be intentional and inspirational to support connection and engagement. Providing a variety of thoughtful spaces that support all types of group and individual activities is essential—with the right elements to enhance human performance.

When it comes to where we work, people have choices. We need to create a workplace experience that draws people in by fine-tuning spaces to support physical, emotional, and cognitive needs of individuals.

Attendees explored our Work Pavilion at NeoCon to see how this experience came to life. The floorplan reflected group and individual activities—why people are coming into the office, what they need to do at work, and how we can best support them.

• Focus Spaces – Support individual concentration and flow.
• Collaboration Spaces – Optimize group work with varying tasks, group sizes, and activity durations.
• Restore Spaces – Enhance the feeling of belonging and restore energy levels.

7. DesignLab 2025: Creativity Meets Innovation

The Haworth DesignLab is an annual initiative established to celebrate new perspectives and artistic vision in the world of design. Launched in 2023, DesignLab looks beyond our industry to create unexpected, emotive, and immersive experiences. The program's NeoCon exhibit provides a platform to recognize and support emerging designers whose work demonstrated exceptional experimentation in form and materials.

At NeoCon 2025, DesignLab offered a new gathering place that blended community and exhibit experiences. The space fostered moments of exploration and connection through interactions with the designers, a compelling speaker series, and a warm touch of hospitality that resulted in greater affinity with our Haworth brands.