An artist’s space can reveal as much about him or her as their actual artworks can, an idea that CH explores in our regular Studio Visit series. Taking things to a new level is “Art…
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A look inside NYC’s new multidisciplinary space by Studio Dror and WeWork
Whether he’s designing expandable luggage for Tumi or an entire island off the coast of Turkey, each project Dror Benshetrit and his design studio undertake demands a unique approach. The same goes for his latest project, WeCross, a creative lab in New York City that brings creative innovators across…
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Likeminded artisans gather in a collaborative workspace in Portland
For some people, the constant rattling of trains outside their window might be irritating. But for Beam & Anchor co-founders Robert and Jocelyn Rahm, it sounded just right. “I grew up in a small town in Missouri,” said Robert. “The trains sound like home.”
For years the Rahms had dreamed of opening a collaborative workshop for a dedicated community of likeminded artisans. The first step was finding the appropriate space, which they did in a beloved, but neglected, warehouse in the heavily industrial north Portland neighborhood of Albina. Surrounded by the eerie echoes of bands practicing in nearby garages and puffs of steam from Widmer Brothers Brewing the next block down, the space was theirs after eight months of persuading the owner to hand over the keys. “The owner really loved the building and didn’t need the money,” says Robert. “We had to convince him that we were really using it, that we’d honor it and were trustworthy.”
Earlier this spring, Beam & Anchor finally opened its doors. Stepping inside is not unlike stepping inside the Rahms’ home, which is understandable given that their primary goal for the space was that it should feel like one in its decor and furnishings. The upstairs floor of the two-story building houses a half-dozen “makers” and their employees, like Taylor Ahlmark and Nori Gilbert of Maak Soap Lab and Wood & Faulk‘s Matt Pierce, where they painstakingly craft the richly detailed soaps, furniture, bags and other goods to sell in the retail store below. Robert accents their displays with interesting vintage finds like an antique gurney from the Korean War, among others.
To characterize the space as merely a workshop and store, however, would ignore the building’s animating spirit. Upstairs, an open kitchen with a large dining table serves as a gathering space, and most of the workshops are separated from each other with floor-to-ceiling curtains instead of walls—except for the wood shop, which is partitioned off because of sawdust and noise. However, even that wall has a glass viewing panel through which visitors to the building can see furniture coming together.
Some of the craftspeople, like Jocelyn’s brother Bren Reis, knew the couple beforehand; Reis is a woodworker who founded Earthbound Industries. Others sought them out once word of the project spread. “Community is so central to what we do here,” says Jocelyn. Robert adds, “We aimed to pick people that we would have over for dinner.”
That community spirit serves as a foundation for the Rahms’ plans to host community events like “maker networking” suppers and a summer music series, are underway, and there’s been some interest in setting up food carts in the parking lot.
Beam & Anchor’s early and enthusiastic reception belies the popular belief that creativity thrives in isolation. With support, encouragement and a constant infusion of new ideas, Portland makers have a haven in which to nurture their ideas. The best part is that the building, as a dynamic experiment, is not that difficult to duplicate. All you need is a germ of an idea and an empty building to see it grow.
Virtual versus physical: Our conversation with six creative professionals about their workspaces
Our environment influences our behavior both physically and mentally, guiding our personal evolution to determine, among other things, our quality of life. Nowhere does this ring truer than in the workplace. The surroundings, comforts, decorations and distractions that exist in the work environment can have a huge influence on creativity and productivity. For most, the workday revolves around the desk, and how individuals interact with that space can give some insight into the way they operate in the workplace. For the contemporary professional there now exist two desktops, the virtual and the physical, which raises some interesting questions about the relationship between these two spaces in our lives. We asked six creative professionals from the art, web and design worlds to show us their virtual and physical spaces, and found out what makes the modern desktop.
Yes. My virtual desktop gets far more use than my physical one, and it can accompany me into bed at night when I’m being a workaholic (which is always). I work from home, and my physical desk mostly just exists to keep me off the couch and save my back.
Virtual: My desktop image is the cover of a 1969 issue of the German advertising-art magazine Gebrauchsgraphik. Search its name on Flickr — amazing. Physical: Hard to pick a favorite, but I guess I’d go with the little metal bust on an acrylic stand, which I got this summer at a San Francisco antique store. I’m obsessed with things on stands; I also have a set of old geodes mounted on little metal tripods.
I don’t have much to organize on my physical desktop — I keep my mess on my kitchen table. But I will say that on my virtual one, I’ve always religiously kept things in aliased folders because a long, long time ago I was told that storing a lot of stuff on your desktop slows down your computer, which I think is actually no longer the case. Ah, modern technology.
Quiet, comfort, and good food at arm’s reach. I work really well at home actually — I can focus here far better than I can in an office. Offices make me tired and shifty. Especially when I’m not near a window, which has been the case for half of my working life. Once I was shut away in my own office with no window at all, so I hung a huge photograph of a forest on the wall, but it didn’t help the feeling that my soul was slowly dying.
Yes, my physical desk is just a seat. As much a place to sit and get work done as it’s a place to store all the stuff I accumulate. The foursquare office is pretty open with lots of common space to work. There are some days I’m only at my desk for a few minutes (meetings, etc) and I’m totally fine with that. My virtual desktop is pretty bare—I’ve got a portal to Dropbox which mimics everything onto my Mac at home, iPad and iPhone. I guess the Dropbox cloud is the virtual equivalent of my messy physical desktop.
Physical: It’s a mess. I just tend to accumulate stuff—stickers, papers, postcards, photos, books, baseball cards, trinkets, USB cables. Virtual: Nothing! Since I got this new Mac I’ve bee keeping it real organized!
Physical: Penguins that sing and dance to House of Pain’s “Jump Around” (my Mom sent it to me for Christmas). Virtual: I’ve been using this app called F.lux that subtly changes the color of your screen as you get further from dawn and closer to dusk. Took me a few days to adjust but it’s pretty nice.
Virtual: My desktop hasn’t always been so tidy – the desktop my old MacBook was littered with old files. My physical desk has always been kind of an “organized mess”. Luckily, foursquare is moving offices next week which will force me to get rid of most of it.
Being in a crowded room. I’m more productive when everyone around me is buzzing. Most of the early foursquare prototype got built in East Village coffee shops since the atmosphere was much more motivating than working alone at my kitchen table.
I don’t see them as connected in any way. I do regret that I don’t connect them more thoughtfully.
On my physical desktop, Kinesis keyboard is a necessity. On my virtual desktop, I guess it would be my Sparrow Mail window.
In 2005 I wrote a book called The Laws of Simplicity that espoused principles of organization that I use in my daily life.
Yes, one collects dust and the other, images dragged off the Internet.
Nothing really, I have no shame, not anymore.
I have a small collection of cute/ugly animals stuck to the wall of my office. I haven’t really added to the collection for a long time now but I still like them. I try and keep both desktops clutter-free. I don’t like clutter. I don’t like unnecessary things. Almost everything is unnecessary…apart from wet wipes, of course.
I am feral. I learned and adapted by need and circumstance.
Nothing. I like space and the suggestion of a never-ending afternoon. To keep productive I need no restrictions or distractions. I’m distracted so easily.
It’s a cubicle with gray walls and very little flair.
I moved into this office two weeks ago, so I don’t have much in the way of decoration. Several must-haves are red pens, a stack of clean notebooks, and a drawer to stash all the extras: snacks, stain remover, passport, calculator, hand cream. I would equate that drawer to the folder of photos on my virtual desktop.
I tend to remember things as soon as I write them down, so I wasn’t forced to get organized until I started managing people in an editorial role. Now I stay on track by adding appointments, even tentative ones, to my calendar as soon as they crop up and keeping a running tally of high-priority tasks on Mac Stickies. Funny enough, I loathe physical Post-It Notes.
No clutter. Bright but warm light. Seltzer. Noise-canceling headphones. A land line.
My desktops are the same, there is never enough space!
My wood shop is sort of next door to my office so there is usually a fine layer of dust on everything. I am kind of self-conscious of that when clients are visiting.
My dog, George, She is currently on my computer desktop and strangely, sometimes we catch her on the actual desktop! She is a 40-pound Basset hound, explorer.
On my computer desktop I like all my icons very small. For some reason I feel like it is more organized when it is small. I wish I had a shelving system, floor to ceiling. I think that will be my next investment.
I am always looking for pens in my work space—they keep disappearing. My wireless printer is a task-killer, easy as pie, I can print from my phone! The main things that keep me productive are the endless threads of emails I tend to find myself on.
Fifty offices you wish you worked at in one comprehensive book
Focused on the intelligent collaborations between architects and interior designers, Total Office Design explores contemporary workplaces that are as visually striking as they are functional. The book categorizes the offices by budget—small, medium and large—with comprehensive floor plans, insightful texts and nearly 425 vibrant photographs accompanying the 50 total spaces.
The smaller offices show that size doesn’t matter. One clear standout is the creative solution Dutch architects Alrik Koudenburg and Joost van Bleiswijk devised for the temporary 100-square-meter workspace of Amsterdam-based agency Nothing. Limited to a €30,000 budget, the office is built primarily from industrial strength cardboard. The inexpensive, recyclable material was laser cut and assembled simply by slotting the pieces together, without the need of any chemicals or glue and further pushing the boundaries of sustainable office design.
We are still impressed with the skate ramp at Comvert‘s cinema-turned-office in Milan, but another mid-size favorite we found in the pages of Total Office Design is the striking South Korean subsidiary of Berlin-based company Platoon. As a organization that aids in cultural development, Platoon‘s Seoul office reflects their enthusiasm for sustainable construction. Architects Graft + Baik Jiwon designed the space from modular shipping containers, but avoided the typically tinny and claustrophobic effect of the metal units by replacing the walls with floor-to-ceiling glass. By using the containers as an exoskeleton, they were able to make a bold statement about repurposed design while keeping the project under the $2 million budget.
Also worth noting is our personal favorite is the headquarters of Milan board sport company Comvert. This cavernous old cinema was transformed into a joint retail space and lofted wooden bowl for skateboarding.
With an exterior reminiscent of dazzle camouflage used during WWI to confuse enemies, the impressive facade of Copenhagen’s Saxo Bank HQ makes it our top pick from the large-scale office designs. The 200 million DKR budget allowed studio 3XN to spare no expense on the interiors either, which takes a calmer approach more on par with quintessential Danish style. A combination of wood, steel, stark white walls and high ceilings encourages “interaction and knowledge sharing throughout the company.”
Total Office Design sells for £25 through Thames & Hudson, and stateside through Amazon.
Rich stereo sound via USB-powered speakers with a desk-friendly footprint
Artfully designed with science in mind, these desktop UCube speakers deliver a powerful 170-degree field of sound in an an equally impressive 3.25-inch package.
The surprisingly small speakers require only two cables and no external power supply, meaning less mess on your desk without sacrificing sound. Rather than being limited by standard USB port five-volt-max output, the UCube’s “smart” power supply stores energy during low level song passages so the amp can reach up to 15 watts per speaker when needed. Put simply, the system delivers crisp clean sound without breaking up when you crank the dial to 10. Adding to the kick, the “Balanced Mode Radiator” offers a full audio range, flat-diaphragm driver that delivers more than enough powerful sound to fill the room.
We also dig the custom aluminum stand (part of the discrete design intended to pair well with Macs) that easily fixes to the speakers with a twist of your thumb and finger. Use the stand or simply place the shiny boxes themselves on your desk, shelf, or anywhere you need a compact speaker that looks great and sounds even better. Scheduled to drop at the end of June, look toward the Apple Store or pre-order online now from Crutchfield for $150.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
