Taking your work home is nothing new, but taking your home to work? A new furniture company is trying to do just that. Coalesse, part of the Steelcase family, is launching a new lifestyle of work -- one where offices are places of life, community and nuances. Partnering with the likes of Carl Hansen & Son (Denmark), Walter Knoll AG & Co. (Germany), Viccarbe (Spain), and PP Mobler (Denmark), as well as drawing on Steelcase's brands (Brayton, Metro and Vecta), the Coalesse collection offers beautifully executed alternatives - albeit at luxury price points - for the cubically challenged.

We've got some choice snaps from our recent tour of the showroom in the Chicago Merchandise Mart after the jump and must admit the detailing and craftsmanship are to die for, but we're still unsure of how the corporate world will respond to all this. Sure, design-y types get it -- beautiful, well made (and locally made! more on that soon) furniture deserves to be part of all our work-spaces, but with price points well beyond the reach of "normal" budgets, this collection seems to demand big corporate clients to succeed. We're told it's about cross-over, that many of these iconic pieces will be sold to residential buyers as well as contract, but we'd like to see any contract collection subsist on the likes of Suzy Something's home-office in Austin, TX. Still, Coalesse wins karma-points with its bounty of sustainable materials and, as mentioned, the locality of its production. Co-opting the "Slow Food" philosophy, they're introducing a "Slow-Manufacturing" process by attempting to manufacture pieces closer to their areas of distribution. A great example is the Viccarbe collection, designed and manufactured in Spain for the European market. Instead of spending huge amounts to ship the pieces over for the American customers, the same designs are manufactured by craftsman in Coalesse's North Carolina factory. It's nice to see a bit of craftsmanship returning to the US, as well as a sustainability solution that goes beyond materiality and considers the entire lifecycle.

Final thoughts? Coalesse is beautiful, desirable, timeless and would probably win any client over based solely on the sheer richness of its materials, but if this is to be the future of the office (we hope!) we want to see more than just stools being made. Whether we like it or not, there's a new cubicle growing, and in 2008, that means more than chairs, filing cabinets and conference tables -- it means culture.

Coalesse showroom, Merchandise Mart, Chicago

Andoo chair

Meeting spaces

Bob Lounge Chair

Solid beech frame on the CH100 Series Chair

Together bench and table

Built-in technology hubs in meeting tables

The new executive office space

The new executive office space

Showroom exterior

Chicago skyline

top images: Wing Chair