A project is a list of requirements before it is a list of furniture

Two buyers can order the same chair and only one of them is making a mistake. What separates them is not taste but context: a hotel lobby, a clinic waiting room and an executive floor switch on different families of requirements — fire behaviour, acoustics, emissions, hygiene, sheer resistance to hours of use. This section reads furniture through that lens, sector by sector.

Each sector page follows the same discipline: which requirements actually matter in that context, the mistake specifiers make most often, what belongs in the specification, and which collections answer. One rule is stated before anything else: suitability is what the manufacturer has declared and documented — the certificate is theirs, quoted under their name, and where a document does not exist we say so rather than write around it.

For the workplace, the coverage runs through every room a project actually contains — executive, open plan, meeting, reception, waiting, break, outdoor, washroom, acoustic treatment — each with its own page and its own logic. Here we keep to the question that comes before all of them: what does this space have to comply with, and how do you write it down so it survives the project?

The four project types: Office Projects, Hospitality projects, Healthcare projects and Education projects.

FAQ

How do I know which requirements apply to my project?
Start from the use, because that is what switches them on: a public-facing space raises fire and durability questions, a clinic adds hygiene, an open plan adds acoustics. The sector pages map the requirement families for each context; the exact rules depend on your jurisdiction, and we work from the manufacturer's documents rather than from memory.
Can a product be right for one sector and wrong for another?
Constantly, and it is the most common specification error: a beautiful lounge chair moved from a private office into a hotel lobby without checking its fire documentation, or a residential-grade table sold into a space used ten hours a day. Same product, different context, different verdict — which is why this section is organised by sector and not by product.
What documents should I collect before committing?
The manufacturer's technical sheet and the certificates that match your context, in writing, at quotation stage. If a document does not exist for a given product, you want to know then — not at inspection. We state what can be documented and what cannot, because a specification built on assumptions is the expensive kind.
Do you help write the specification itself?
Yes: technical data, finish codes, dimensioned drawings, and equivalent alternatives at more than one price level so a budget round removes cost rather than compliance. A specification written this way protects the designer at award and at handover — and it is far cheaper to write than to repair.
My sector is not one of the four pages — is it out of scope?
No. The four cover what we serve most often, not the boundary: a conference centre, a showroom or a professional practice follows the same method — the context's requirements, the manufacturer's documents, the specification. Tell us what you are designing and we will tell you what we can document.

Five questions that sort any project's requirements

Ask them in this order and the specification almost writes itself.

Who uses the space, and for how long?
An hour a day or ten, staff or public: intensity and audience are the first switch — they decide durability and safety families before any catalogue opens.
Is the public present?
Public access changes fire requirements and liability. It is the single most expensive detail to discover late, and the cheapest to declare early.
What does the building already impose?
Ask the designer or the safety officer what the building's classification requires. Furniture inherits constraints from architecture more often than buyers expect.
What must be cleanable, and how?
Healthcare imposes it, food areas suggest it, intensive use rewards it: the cleaning regime decides materials as much as appearance does.
What proof will be asked for at the end?
Handover, inspection, audit: whoever signs at the end decides which documents you need at the start. Collect them at quotation, in writing.