Somewhere in Turf’s NeoCon showroom, there’s a wall of text that most people probably walked past. That’s the part Faraz Shah, Turf’s Brand Director, hopes people didn’t miss.
“This is the first time that we’ve publicly explained our approach in writing, literally on the wall,” Faraz says. “Our spaces have historically been showstoppers that attract attention to the architecture, the products, and the finishes. While our overall space is typically seen and experienced, we wanted to connect the space with the thought and intention behind it.”
“This is the first time that we’ve publicly explained our approach in writing, literally on the wall,” says Faraz Shah, Turf’s Brand Director. “We wanted to connect the space with the thought and intention behind it.”
It’s a small admission for a company whose showrooms have made a habit of speaking for themselves. This year’s showroom, marking Turf’s 10th anniversary and designed by Elizabeth Von Lehe of CannonDesign, doesn’t look much like the future. It looks like the ‘90s: bright, saturated, a little loud, and built around a concept Faraz and his team are calling “Neoretrofutureoptimism.”
New acoustic panels Plate, Platter, Cushion, and Point don’t sit as finished products on display. They’re the walls, the architecture, and the overall shape of the room.
“In order to look ahead, we needed to look to the past,” he says. He keeps coming back to one comparison: AI right now feels a lot like the internet did back then, exciting and a little unsettling all at once. “We see so many parallels to the ’90s/2000s in the present day, and especially with the rise of life-changing technology,” he says. “Nostalgia is the core of Neoretrofutureoptimism. This isn’t just nostalgia for the sake of itself. We developed Neoretrofutureoptimism to emphasize that an approach that uses the past must take an optimistic look forward.”
Four new acoustic panels, Plate, Platter, Cushion, and Point, also made an appearance.
Bright and saturated, Turf’s 10th anniversary showroom uses nostalgia as a design tool rather than a punchline.
“The new products were building blocks for us to define the space and bring the immersive acoustic performance to life,” he says. “Our approach is less about showcasing an individual product, and more about using the systems as the architecture we inhabit.”
Color carries just as much weight. Turf’s expanded Hues collection gave each room in the showroom its own distinct mood, a string of small surprises strung through one larger theme. “Each room carried a unique aesthetic that added to the immersive journey of the showroom, offering surprise and delight around every corner,” he says.
Repetition, light, shadow, and texture do double duty here, turning acoustic performance into something you experience.
“The biggest design challenge of all is time. We have one year, from NeoCon to NeoCon, to develop an idea and bring it to life. The date doesn’t move, the budgets don’t get bigger, and the work never stops. We needed to ensure the design of a space with such a culturally responsive theme felt intentional, and not rushed,” he says, crediting Von Lehe, CMF expert Carolyn Ames Noble, and a wider team that spent the year strategizing, writing, building, and installing the finished room.
A retro-informed sitting area and sound room brings Turf’s Neoretrofutureoptimism theme down to human scale.
“We’ve shifted our thinking from making products to working on projects, to being a design partner. We’re designing products now in a different way, where they are systems-focused at an architectural scale.”
