Hasta La Ideas

Many of you who have designed desks have done so in a studio. But as a professional organizer for nine years, I’ve been inside hundreds of people’s homes and offices and have made this simple observation designers could benefit from: Not all end-users will have space next to their desks for file cabinets, credenzas, etc. Those customers may appreciate a desk designed to provide storage, so critical papers and tools can be kept close at hand. There are many ways to provide this storage, using traditional techniques or more unusual approaches. Here are a variety of designs for you to check out, with the scale swinging both ways on the style-vs.-utility balance, as per the designers’ tastes.

Traditional: Desks with drawers

The photo above illustrates a great example of updating the style of a basic design. The standard way to provide storage is simply to have drawers—on one side, or on both. The Horace Desk from Geoffrey Keating provides this while adding a dash of retro, combining sheet-metal drawers with handsome hardwood. Also note the elegant dovetails not only on the drawer fronts, but in the surface of the desk itself, where you rarely see them. And don’t forget that if you’re putting drawers on both sides, you’ll want to ensure there’s enough leg space left so the customer doesn’t feel cramped and uncomfortable. The drawers may be various sizes, and some customers will want at least one drawer which accommodates hanging file folders.

For an example on how a basic idea like drawers can get re-thought, look at the Cartesia desk from Colors—where the drawers can open to the front or to the side. This allows you to access two adjacent drawers at once—an interesting feature, though this utility can really only be taken advantage of in offices of particular and minimalist layout; since you need room to pull out those side drawers, the design effectively kills the possibility of placing more furniture adjacent to the desk. Note that the bottom three panels front one deeper drawer, and there’s a small drawer at the top rear that allows stored items to use the cable feed slot.

Traditional: Desks with matching pedestals

Some end users need to shift their workspaces throughout the day—for example, they might be sitting alone at their desks in the morning, then sitting side-by-side with a co-worker to collaborate on something in the afternoon. For situations like this, where more legroom is spontaneously needed, a mobile pedestal that fits under a drawer-less desk provides flexibility in how the storage is placed, but doesn’t use all the under-desk space as well as built-in drawers do. The CBox Doppio from Dieffebi, designed by Gianmarco Blini, has a nice touch: the fitted cushion that allows the pedestal to serve as seating.

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