This spring, our team tackled a showroom design and installation for Ply Gem and Mitten in their new Edmonton, AB location. Ply Gem and Mitten specialize in outdoor building products like windows, doors, and siding. They like to have high-quality, to-scale samples so that their clients can examine and feel the materials to make an informed decision about what finishes they'd like on their home.
To accomplish this kind of interaction, we designed and fabricated 75 custom sample boards so that their clients could pull out a panel, get up close, and directly handle the material. Each sample board is made of UHMW material or "puck board" and cut out on our CNC machine to create a unique shape with a built-in handle. Our fab shop mounted the samples to each board, and labels were designed and printed out that stated the name, type, and colour of the product.
Now, where do all these sample boards live? A 14ft x 5ft custom cabinet piece with drawers explicitly designed to house the samples. This cabinet is the showroom's centrepiece and has lots of unique features. The inside of the drawers have specifically sized slots built so the sample boards can easily slide in and out. Each panel is perfectly spaced apart from each other so that the sample materials are not squashed or scratched. We made the drawer faces out of a white Corian for a high-quality, polished look. A dark grey Corian countertop with a touchscreen inset in it was installed and polished to perfection. The touchscreen lets clients access more information about the physical samples below.
Displaying the doors and windows was a significant challenge. The walls built to house the sample doors and windows were 10ft tall, but the doorway entering the showroom was only 7ft tall. This meant the walls were built in two different pieces here in Calgary and shipped that way. Once they arrived in Edmonton and made it through the door, they were reassembled and put back together again to reach their full size. Once the walls were up, full-size windows and doors were installed and were fully functional so that their clients could get hands-on and test out how things worked. These life-size style samples brought PlyGem and Mitten's classic interactive concept into focus once again.
To top things off, each wall and window was labeled with product signage that was rear mounted to Plexi and attached with sleek stand-off hardware. This showroom project was one of a kind and we're very much looking forward to working with Ply Gem and Mitten again in the near future.
