Spectrum of talent: this year's AR Awards for Excellence at Spectrum show how good design can enliven and improve office life.

The annual AR Awards for Excellence have become a regular fixture of Spectrum, the international furniture and interior design fair held at London's Commonwealth Institute in May. This year's show yielded another intriguing and diverse crop of entries (previewed in AR May 2004), which were judged by Sarah Wigglesworth, of Wigglesworth & Till Architects, Ken Shuttleworth, formerly with Foster and Partners but now heading up his own practice, MAKE, and me, AR Managing Editor. Awards are made for products on show at Spectrum for the first time and judges look for qualities such as inventiveness, originality, elegance and general fitness for purpose. After an exhaustive survey of the stands and some animated debate, we singled out three joint winners and four highly commended submissions.

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First joint winner was the Please chair from Steelcase, a sleek but highly ergonomic office chair, whose fluid lines, user comfort and general attention to detail (it has recently been awarded a certification for life cycle environmental impact in France, where it is manufactured) greatly impressed the judges. Based on an extensive analysis of spinal motion, its 'two-back' system offers independent support and motion for the upper and lower parts of the back, helping to improve user posture, comfort and, by implication, productivity, as absenteeism due to dicky backs will now be a thing of the past. The second winner was Inspiration Squared, an inventive modular flooring tile system from Interface Europe. The key is random patterning across each range and each individual tile (no two tiles are exactly alike), which generates subtle and unique designs. Tiles can be laid in any order, making the system both radically simple to use and highly economical, as it eliminates stock dependency. The final winner was Eriskay fabric, a worsted material with an unusual honeycomb texture, designed by Catherine Murray from Bute Fabrics. Judges were impressed by its seductive tactile and visual qualities and the wide range of vibrant colours (36 in all), their depth and intensity heightened by the complex structure of the fabric.

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Highly commended awards were made to Flight, a compact folding and nesting table, which demonstrated great flexibility and ease of operation, designed by Bruce High and distributed by Senator International; the Instant Space room divider, an ingenious horizontal screen housed within a moveable aluminium column that can deftly subdivide space, designed by Leon Wohlage Wernik Architects and distributed by Hemsley Associates; and the Snooze chair, a svelte curved and decorated leather seat on slim steel legs, designed by Fredrik Mattson and Stefan Borselius for Swedish furniture manufacturer Bla Station and distributed by In Form Furniture. The final highly commended award went to the Cygnus flat screen arm from DPG, an elegantly styled, adjustable gas-lift arm with an integral cable management system that can fold flat into a mere 80mm of space; an undoubted boon for any office, and, in its efficient ergonomics and sleek appearance, an example of how good design can improve daily working life.

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