Umbra (company)
Umbra is a home accessories design and manufacturing company. The company has headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and satellite offices in the Netherlands, Brazil, the United States, and China. The firm sells more than 2,000 home products through over 25,000 retailers in 120 countries. History. The firm was founded in 1978 by childhood friends Les Mandelbaum and Paul Rowan. The firm opened its first store in Toronto's Queen West District in 2007. It has retail stores in the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, China, Israel, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia , and Singapore, and the Umbra and Umbra Shift e-commerce websites. Umbra products are also sold through other retailers. Umbra Concept Store. The Umbra Store is located north of Queen Street West at 165 John Street within the downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The building was constructed for the Umbra design company in 2007 to a design by Kohn Shnier Architects. The building has translucent bright pink vertical bands that wrap a glass structure positioned on the corner of a side street, surrounded by monotone brick construction. In comparison to the surrounding architecture the building is considerably smaller. The  building is three stories tall. The overall axis of the structure is predominantly vertical with a centralized plan. The building in plan is a rectangle with a smaller rectangle offset to the middle that is positioned off center towards the main elevation. Designs. Umbra has an in-house design team headed by Matt Carr, consisting of over 30 designers in Canada and abroad. Many independent designers have also collaborated with the firm. Notable ones who have made significant contributions to Umbra include Karim Rashid, Hlynur Atlason, and Harry Allen. In 1996, Umbra teamed up with Rashid to create what would  become one of the company’s most well-known products; the GARBO trash can. The wastebasket was named after actress Greta Garbo, mimicking the shape of her body. It sold more than two million units within the first two years of production and continues to sell today in a miniature version, GARBINO. It was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in 1999 and added into the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in 2000. In 1997, it earned the Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award. Rashid also designed the OH Chair for Umbra; a "scoop" of plastic, making use of  negative space, modeled into a chair. These chairs are still in the firm's catalogue today. Umbra Shift. Umbra Shift is a brand extension of Umbra that utilizes higher end materials and different production techniques. The products are sold through the independent retailers and the Umbra Shift website.