Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: TMRnyc)

We’ll bet our overloaded powerstrips that your home, office, and/or home office is plagued by plugly furniture. Coined by designers Scott Behr and Matthew Warren to describe furniture that lacks a built-in power supply, outlets, and cable management solution, plugliness is to blame for that ever-growing tangle of dusty cords lurking beneath your desk. Enter Total Metal Resource (TMRnyc), the Brooklyn-based design firm founded by Behr and Warren. When not providing services that range from blacksmithing and welding to lighting and water-jet cutting for designers and architects, TMRnyc creates what Behr describes as “wired furniture and lighting mixed with high-edge industrial bling.”

As one of 45 exhibitors at the seventh annual BKLYN DESIGNS, which kicks off tomorrow and runs through Sunday in Brooklyn’s DUMBO, TMRnyc will display its wired wares in a giant cube made from laser-cut sheets of aluminum. Inside their Richard Serra-flavored booth, you’ll find the new Side Wired Desk (a prototype is pictured above, at left), which is studded with eight outlets and itself plugs into the wall—with a lone cord. “The design challenge was to make a great-looking desk, incorporate a hidden cable management system and power source, as well as making it fast and easy to get at the cable ends to rearrange things as needed,” Behr tells us. The sleek, wood-topped solution involves wire grommets and a hinged tray that can manage cables and otherwise minimize clutter. The target audience? “People that are obsessed with organization and neatness—or someone that just wants to take their desktop back from their computer.”