Design
MTS Seating is the company you can trust to deliver fresh, design-forward, premium seating solutions project after project, year after year. No other company has the will — or the way — to deliver customer-centric design with expertise and ease. Our corporate philosophy to collaboratively work together with designers and specifiers to provide custom seating solutions is unparalleled in the industry. It is our goal to make your design vision a reality.
Manhattan
The InterContinental New York Barclay is a classic luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan with a rich history. It was built in 1926 with the support of the Vanderbilt family. The hotel’s interiors blend timeless glamour with
contemporary elegance.
Design Solutionist, Les Faulk, of the InterContinental Hotels Group and Senior Interior Design Professional Caroline Bertrand from HOK (formerly BBG-BBGM), were looking for a partner to create a new banquet chair for the property. The hotel was built in the American Federalist style and Bertrand wanted to bring that style through the seating design. She had a vision of what she wanted to see in the InterContinental and thought MTS would be the perfect partner.
“MTS has been our first go-to choice for hospitality seating for years. They are great to work with — incredibly helpful,” stated Bertrand. “You are somewhat limited with what you can do with lightweight stacking chairs, but MTS was able to give us a great deal of design flexibility.”
The project was managed by MTS Account Manager David Wiles, in conjunction with MTS Account Manager Jason Kurth, who took Caroline’s vision to Josh Swy MTS Director of Design. Bertrand submitted her original design to MTS for mechanical drawings. Swy responded with sketches within a few days. Because of their 60 years of engineering expertise, MTS knew what would work from an engineering standpoint, and what would work within InterContinental’s budget. “MTS was very accommodating — they would offer design alternatives when they knew a certain design wouldn’t work.” MTS made the chair stackable and offered an alternative design to reduce cost. A prototype was developed in about three weeks that Bertrand was able to give to the InterContinental Hotels Group
for approval.
The end result is a one of a kind Como banquet chair with a custom shield back that reflects the hotel’s Federalist style. Bertrand’s vision was realized! According to Swy, “It was a great collaborative process. We really enjoy helping designers bring their vision to light and Caroline was wonderful to work with.”
Betrand is excited to see how elegant the new chairs look in the renovated space.
The renovation of the hotel has not yet begun, but MTS will be producing more than 700 chairs for use in all of the 18 meeting spaces within the hotel. And the Como 28/12 custom design will deliver a COMFORTWeb Seat with flexible stretchband support for 2¼" of luxurious COMFORTmode foam — so this chair will sit as good as it looks.
In collaboration with our customers, MTS creates seating solutions that not only fulfill their design vision but also provide performance-oriented products with unparalleled structural integrity and legendary warranties. This is what we call
“The Art of Seating.”