Chicago is my favorite city, so I was thrilled to be one of the selected students from the Ohio Kentucky Chapter to attend Neocon earlier in June. I was very excited to be going since this was my first Neocon.
During the trip, there were many different activities that took place. Starting off the trip on Monday, we walked around the Mart with tours of different show rooms, including some of my favorites such as Steelcase, J&J Flooring, Teknion and Luum. We finished the evening party hopping with Panolam, Patcraft, and Shaw.
Tuesday morning we woke up early to participate in the six hour Student Design Charette. Sixty students from all over the country were placed onto twelve different teams of five, and had the day to come up with an entire design plan for a university study area. During the day we had the opportunity to walk around the Mart with our teams and collect samples to put on our final presentation boards. The Charette was a really great experience because I got to work with students from different universities and see how their design skills differ from mine. At the end of the Charette, we presented our design to the team of judges. Ending the evening we were treated by Dan and Belinda Binford to some famous Chicago style deep dish pizza.
On our final day, we were given a tour of the award winning Neocon showroom, Herman Miller. This was super exciting to be getting a tour of Herman Miller because I am personally a big fan of their products, and use them in different projects while at Bowling Green State University. After the tour of the showroom we got to explore Neocon on our own. I really enjoyed this because I got to see different showrooms that are some of my favorites to use in various projects, including Hightower, and a few new companies I had never heard of such as Scandinavian Spaces and Montisa. I am a new fan of Montisa, and it's not just because of the free gelato they gave out! We rounded out the trip with the Charette Winners Reception, where two students from the Ohio Kentucky Chapter were on the first and third place teams.
I am very grateful for this opportunity to represent the IIDA Ohio Kentucky Chapter and Toledo. I would highly recommend this trip to any other Interior Design students!
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