Teknion

About

Teknion is a Canadian manufacturer of commercial furniture and architectural interior systems, based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1983. The company was established by Saul Feldberg as a spin-off from Global, the Toronto office-furniture business he had started in 1966, and it launched with a panel-based product line called the Teknion Office System. Teknion listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in July 1998 under the symbol TKN; its controlling shareholder, A-Tean Holdings, then bought in the remaining shares and returned the business to private ownership in a transaction completed in February 2008. It remains privately held and controlled by the Feldberg family. David Feldberg is Teknion's president and chief executive, while his brother Joel heads Global Furniture Group, a separate family company and not Teknion's parent. Saul Feldberg was chairman of both businesses until his death in January 2023. The corporate head office is at 1150 Flint Road in the North York district of Toronto, with a United States head office in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Manufacturing is concentrated in Ontario and Quebec, where the subsidiary Teknion Groupe Québec is based at Laurier-Station, with further plants in Alberta, North Carolina and Malaysia. Products are commissioned from outside design studios, among them the London practice PearsonLloyd and the British agency forpeople. The catalogue covers workstations, private-office casegoods and reception furniture; task, conference, multi-use and lounge seating; multipurpose, height-adjustable, classroom and café tables; modular cabinets, bookcases, lockers and credenzas; glass and solid demountable wall systems; and accessories including lighting, freestanding and desk-mounted screens, monitor arms and power fittings. Alongside the core line the company runs Teknion Architectural Interiors, the social-space brand Studio TK and the contract textile house Luum Textiles, which began as Teknion Textiles before relaunching under the Luum name; a business alliance formed in 2018 with the Toronto firm Gus* Design Group brought Gus* Modern sofas, chairs, ottomans and occasional tables into Teknion's North American dealer network. Zones, developed with PearsonLloyd from 2014, gathers seating, benches, work and canteen tables, screens, easels, storage and semi-private enclosures into one family intended for activity-based offices, and blends traditional and modern manufacturing techniques; it took Best of Competition at the 2016 Best of NeoCon awards in Chicago, along with gold awards for the collection and for the Zones benches. PearsonLloyd also designed Essa, a light task chair launched in October 2020 and named after the word essence, built on a moulded frame with an upholstered seat and curved backrest and drawing its support from curves and contours rather than from an array of adjustment mechanisms. In the architectural range, Altos is a demountable wall system built on an internal steel frame with fascias in solid panel, fabric, tackable fabric, whiteboard and single or double glazing, offered with hard-wired or modular power and data and rated up to 48 STC on solid runs and 46 STC on glass. A later task chair, Tone, was developed with forpeople and shown at NeoCon in 2023 with two mesh options and a knit sleeve on the backrest. Teknion furniture is specified mainly for corporate offices and workplace fit-outs, and the range extends into education and training rooms, healthcare interiors and café and hospitality settings. Products are available through the brand's official website and its network of authorised dealers, supported by showrooms and facilities across North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. The company publishes an annual impact report, states that its full product portfolio is certified to BIFMA LEVEL 3, has committed to the Science Based Targets initiative, has reported to CDP annually since 2015 and has been a member of the JUST programme since 2021, and operates a reclamation programme called Divert that resells, donates or recycles decommissioned furniture from any manufacturer. Teknion is a long-established Canadian manufacturer of office systems, seating, storage and demountable architectural interiors, operating internationally from its base in Toronto.