- One desk. Gray.
- One ergonomic office chair. Black.
- One waste paper basket. Gray plastic.
- One filing cabinet. Gray.
You know – the usual stuff. Typical. Traditional. Booooooring!
I’m not going to claim that a fancy desk or a weird chair is going to magically improve your creativity and productivity – but I am damn sure, that all that sameness and eternal corporate grayness, does nothing good for your ability to come up with great new ideas.
Here are some ways to spruce up a workplace that may actually inject some color and fun into your work environment.
Got Milk?
The Milk desk is a new design to match your Apple gear with it’s white surface and rounded edges.
Partition magic
The wing desk
Or how about a desk made from the wing of a DC3 plane?
The saddle chair
The starting point for the Haag Capisco is just your average, garden-variety office chair – but they’ve moved on from there. The saddle seat gives you a more erect posture and doesn’t cut of the blood flow to your legs.
Bean bags
Bean bags look great and can be used in a million different positions. Four bags and a coffee table and you have a great meeting room!
Bibliochaise
Where do you keep all your reference manuals and handbooks? Close to where you can sit and read them, of course! Meet the Bibliochaise.
Stokke Garden
It’s a tree. It’s a sculpture. It’s… I don’t know what it is, but I like it.
The meeting bed.
When your business is innovation, your office can’t really look like any other corporate wasteland. London-based innovation agency ?WhatIf! know that – as evidenced by e.g. the life-sized plastic cow statue painted like Spiderman in the lobby and the big red couch/bed they use for meetings:
Conference bike
Art tables
I was sitting in my usual café writing this blogpost when I spotted a lady at the next table looking through some pictures of weird and beautiful desks.
A balance act
This is more a metaphor than a piece of furniture – but it’s pretty cool all the same.
Wood wall
Or how about an entire wall covered in cordwood? Not only is it amazingly beautiful, it’s also great for the acoustics and it gives the wall a great texture.
The upshot
So is it the furniture that determines whether a company is creative and fun or staid and boring? Of course not! But the type and variety of furniture does reflect the mood at the company. If you have row upon row of identical, gray desks and chairs then odds are this is not the place wild ideas are born.
And why exactly is it that everyone must have the same desk and chair? Why not let people choose for themselves, and give them a chance to create an environment that suits them. The resulting variety may be confusing to those who think that business is about structure, order and control… but it’s sure to be more stimulating and fun for those of us who think that work is about being happy.
There are more pictures of cool furniture in this flickr set.
Also check out my post on 10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces:
Leave a Reply