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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From self-balancing cubes to Pete Wegner’s inverted city within a city, it’s safe to say that we’ve seen our share of gravity-defying designs. Since then, we’ve found three projects that we can’t help but draw similarities between. Here are a few more force-defying projects that we’ve come across recently.

Photos by Nakani Mamasaxlisi

60 Series from XYZ Integrated Architecture

The Tbilisi, Georgia-based design studio is no stranger to sharp angles and head-tilting constructions. Their series, which takes its name from the acute angles of the pieces, consists a trio of reality-bending furniture pieces: a red chair, a console & chair and a blue table. While the photos are a little too “American Apparel” for our tastes with their leotard-clad models, we can’t deny the conversation starter appeal of this series.

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I’m Jeri Dansky, and I’ve been a professional organizer since November 2004. I help people whose clutter is driving them crazy—and I help the mostly organized do even better. I work with clients to de-clutter and organize their offices, closets, garages, entryways, kitchens and more. I’ve been blogging since 2006, often focusing on interesting products that address various organizing challenges. When other organizers are looking for products to help their clients—products that go beyond the basics of plastic bins and such—I’m often the person they ask for help. So while I’m not a designer myself, I’ve been interested in design (especially as it relates to organizing) for many years, and I’m very appreciative of the great work I often see.

In this new column for Core77, I’ll be using my experience to show you cool, inspirational stuff on the storage/organization front each week.

If you’re designing a bed for urban customers—or anyone with a small home—every bit of extra storage helps. So instead of wasting the space under the bed (or leaving customers to find boxes or baskets that fit underneath), you may want to incorporate under-bed storage into your design. There are two basic ways such storage can be done: with drawers or shelves along the base, or with a platform that lifts up to provide storage underneath.

Beds with drawers

My house was built in the 1960s, which mean the bedrooms are small, and a queen- or king-sized bed takes up most of the floorspace. So I’m glad my bed has a base with built-in drawers, but I’m delighted to see designers creating much nicer products than what I’ve got.

The lovely bed shown above—part of the LAX Series from MASHstudios—has something you seldom see: wheels on the drawers. It has four of these rolling drawers on each side.

I spoke to the brand manager at MASHstudios about this design, and learned that most people ask about those wheels, because it’s such an unusual approach; most storage beds use normal drawer slides, with the associated hardware. But this was an aesthetic choice the company made; for the LAX Series, it specifically tries to use “as little hardware as possible” and to avoid things like visible mounted tracks. The wheels are made of polyurethane (or something similar), and shouldn’t damage most floors; the company has not heard of any such damage problems.

Some people may prefer to have fewer but larger drawers. This Knickerbocker bed from Wonk can be ordered with one or two drawers on each side; if you go with one drawer, it can be either the size shown above, or larger. Providing that level of customization is a nice touch, so customers can get the storage that works best for them.

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It’s easy to create something that’s appealing structure-wise, but nailing down a complementary texture is a lot tougher. Elaborate surface treatments can be overpowering, making it tough to recognize a design’s clean lines; skip the texture and the composition risks coming off a bit passé. Julien Carretero’s series of Stencil Aluminum Furniture seems to have found a refreshing harmony between the two instincts. The fabric-like rivets give a bit of depth to the overall structure—as well as the series’ story, if you take the time to take a closer look.

Carretero has managed to create a casting course that’s a bit more straightforward and economical than the techniques we’re used to reading about. By creating a mold that’s lined with heat-resistant strips of fabric, Belgian-based Carretero is able to mimic the textile’s composition in a much-simplified aluminum casting process. Check out this behind-the-scenes video:

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I’m loving the design of the Mastro Table, created for Italian manufacturer DeCastelli by Viareggio-based Gumdesign. It’s not just the clean look—it’s the perfect, elegant simplicity of proper materials exploitation.

Take a sheet of iron and it’s pretty strong. Bend the edges twice and it’s even stronger, gaining I-beam-like rigidity. And now that you’ve bent those edges, a channel is created–the perfect place to slot a crossbeam for trestle legs.

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