In the coming decades, handheld devices will establish a new paradigm of working intelligence. Individuals will become socially trained for rapid, reactionary, and quick-response modes of communication, consumption, and production. Subsequently, a state of distraction will become the dominant and accepted form of contemporary life.

As a result, business innovators will work to hone and champion a sprint mode of production, while seeking to move beyond the downsides of the distracted state. In this effort, Neutrals will become coveted tools in workplace environments. Combining soft material comfort with the electromagnetic, signal-blocking Faraday cage, Neutrals offers the office environment a focused respite for 20- to 30-minute bursts of concentrated intellectual and creative time.

Often clad in gauche colors, Neutrals’s open mesh design, with visual and acoustic continuity, allows for a sense of connection to the workspace environment, while its spatial isolation creates an opportunity to engage in the ever-elusive state of prolonged concentration.

The project was commissioned by Surface Magazine.