The celebrated designer Milton Glaser, once said that the purpose of art was to inform and delight, to combine together both pleasure and applicability to life.
If you didn’t make it to the PPAI Expo this year, you might not know that the Numo booth was the buzz of the show. Thousands of people converged on their booth and, unlike many come-and-go experiences at tradeshows, their guests stayed. Why?
Numo built a two-story house in the middle of the Expo tradeshow floor. Not tables with product, not a booth with velcro or slat wall and hanging apparel, but they built a home with a bedroom, a pool, a refrigerator, a balcony, couch, bed, and washer/dryer. It was an immersive and breathtaking experience, they took beautiful product and placed it in the context of where it lives, respecting both function and form.
And here’s what you don’t know: Originally, Numo had a completely different concept in mind and spent an inordinate amount of time working on it, but three months before Expo, they got a better idea and scrapped months of planning. In today’s episode, we sit down with Jim Martin and Melissa McCauley to chat about the house, their collaborative, creative process, the homogenization of the industry, and so much more.
This is the story of the house that Numo built.