Häfele Blackbox: New Showroom Opened in Stuttgart

Creative workshop for lighting experiences and variable room concepts

Nagold – 18th October 2022

How do we want to live and work in the future? And how do we want to make more flexible and efficient use of our living and working space? The new showroom from Häfele can be found in the Stuttgart Römerkastell. Furniture, light, space and connectivity are rethought, planned and implemented together with customers in the completely black “Idea Workshop”. Häfele has been welcoming planners, designers, specialist tradespeople, industrial partners and real estate investors/operators into its new showroom in the north of the BadenWürttemberg state capital since mid-October. The internationally active specialist for furniture fittings and architectural hardware, electronic access control systems and LED lighting solutions is particularly interested in discussing and developing new hotel and living room concepts such as Micro-Living apartments in the Blackbox with its guests. The subject of light, and how it can be used to create and control the atmosphere in a room plays an important part in the Blackbox.

The Blackbox is Häfele’s new showroom and creative workshop in the Stuttgart Römerkastell, a fashionable creative and media site in the state capital of Baden-Württemberg.

The Häfele Blackbox is located in the Römerkastell, above the Stuttgart district of Bad Cannstatt. The former barracks, whose site was used by the Romans as a “Castellum”, has developed into a significant creative and media location in Stuttgart over the last 10 years.

Room for dialogue and interaction

The Blackbox serves as a flexible showroom with variable workshop character as a platform for the successful Häfele Academy and as a creative site for events for up to 100 people. In order to utilise the ground floor area, Häfele brought Stuttgart creative agency jangled nerves on board. A room concept was developed together with the agency which showcases the Häfele company, its product ranges and its solutions in a special way. “The Blackbox is a flexible and highly functional space, and works like a theatre stage of possibilities”, explains Prof. Thomas Hundt, co-founder and managing partner of jangled nerves. “The showroom is mainly intended to be a meeting place for dialogue with the customers”, Thomas Hundt continues. “We also expand the physical space into digital space with a floor-to-ceiling LED wall, therefore providing inspirational ways of interacting with visitors.”

The image of a theatre with different stages is always present in the Blackbox. Floor, ceiling, walls – everything is kept black, like in the theatre, and is presented with a well though-out lighting concept.

In the variable exhibition area, Häfele and Nimbus show how rooms can be emotionalised for different atmospheres with light.

Every Häfele showroom must have a modern, multi-functional kitchen. One of the so-called stages is devoted to the topic of “Kitchen”, in conjunction with the “Furniture light” theme.

The focus is on the kitchen, micro-living and hospitality

At the start of the Blackbox, three themes – so-called stages – are enacted by Häfele: the modern, multi-functional kitchen, the topic of micro-living apartments and the hotel room of the future. Particularly the latter is currently being intensively driven forward by Häfele. “The entire bandwidth of the hospitality industry is particularly important to us. This is because this industry is seriously affected by the shortage of skilled workers, a cost explosion and the simultaneous trend towards investments which fulfil sustainability standards and ESG criteria (Environment, Social and Governance). Häfele’s services make an important contribution to optimising the value and benefits of rooms and streamlining the processes in everyday operations,” says Sibylle Thierer, CEO of Häfele. “How can a room be used multiple times? How can it be easily converted? How can it be emotionalised for different atmospheres with good room and furniture light? How do I organize individual offers in a guest and operatorfriendly way? We want to discuss and answer these questions in the Blackbox,” says Sibylle Thierer.

In order to reinforce the hospitality sector, Häfele has established a new department which has moved into its offices in Römerkastell directly above the showroom. This is where industry experts look after hospitality projects, from design to implementation and services during everyday operation. The new Häfele Hospitality Solutions department will be managed by Dr. Thomas Leib and Thomas Bosse, both experienced developers and planners of hospitality projects. They are also looking forward to “their” new showrooms in Stuttgart. Dr Thomas Leib says: “The Blackbox is a future laboratory for a wide variety of space usage in the field of commercial living. Häfele will become a driving force in this sector with the Blackbox and the new business unit.”

One highlight of the Blackbox is the “Hospitality” stage, where Häfele exhibits and tests trendsetting concepts which can be used by hotels 24/7, for example.

A mysterious, dark room – but yet almost everything revolves around light: Thomas Hundt, co-founder and managing partner of the Stuttgart creative agency jangled nerves, is a specialist for expanding physical rooms into digital rooms and giving the space a new dimension. Together with Häfele, he developed the concept of the Blackbox and presented it to about 150 guests as part of the opening event on 13th October. They listened spellbound to the explanations of Thomas Hundt, who explained the Blackbox as the “Theatre stage of possibilities”.

Blackbox light experience

The Blackbox was also designed by Häfele to make the wide range of possibilities of room and furniture lighting tangible. Together with Häfele subsidiary Nimbus, around 150 light points or light lines have been installed in the Blackbox, and each individual light can be actuated individually, dimmed, and the light colour can be varied flexibly and depending on the type of use. In this way, a wide range of lighting scenarios can be programmed on site via the new Häfele Connect wireless technology and the effect thereof tried out. The Blackbox also clearly demonstrates how lighting control can interact with other systems such as access control systems. A light laboratory has been set up in the Blackbox for discussions and planning meetings with lighting professionals. Potential customers can be provided with support for lighting planning on site by the Nimbus and Häfele development engineers and lighting planners, whose offices are also in Römerkastell.

“The Blackbox shows the interplay of light, room and furniture in an impressive way,” says Sibylle Thierer. “A room is first charged emotionally via the light. The Blackbox is a creative and technology workshop for all of our customers: joiners/cabinet makers, planners, industrial partners, investors and operators. We are looking forward to exchanging creative ideas with them in the Blackbox!”

Peter Brückner from Brückner & Brückner architects gave a captivating talk at the official opening. The insight into the creation of the architect’s office showed the outstanding importance of the handicraft in the Brückner & Brückner projects. The handicraft and the carefully chosen materials are what turns a building into an authentic location, according to Peter Brückner. Projects such as the new office construction for the Zieger Group in Plößberg in northern Bavaria were particularly interesting for the numerous joiners and handicraft businesses who had accepted the invitation to the Blackbox, and part of the innovative wooden façade can be seen in the picture.

More information about the Häfele Blackbox and the possibility of booking visits can be found at: www.haefele.de/blackbox