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Wall-Mounted Standing Desk, Yea or Nay?
A desk with no legs, and surfaces with no room for junk
Much of the furniture we use—chairs, tables, desks, dressers—has been in existence in some form for centuries or millenia. So it's always exciting to see someone attempting to create furniture with a new form factor in an attempt to meet modern-day needs that would have stymied our design ancestors.
The question, as always with design intended for mass-market consumption, is whether a bold new piece of furniture that solves the designer's needs will also serve the market's needs.
Enter a caption (optional)Washington-D.C.-based engineer Jamie Terbeest designed his StandCrafted desk to suit his particular situation: With a baby on the way and a small apartment that can't support both a nursery and a home office, he needed a place to perch his computer. Already a standing desk convert, Terbeest figured that given his space constraints, the logical location for this new piece of furniture ought be the wall.
(By the bye, the "workshop" Terbeest refers to in the video is the D.C. outpost of TechShop. Hey, weren't they supposed to open one of those in New York? WE WANT IT!)
The skeletal spine of the StandCrafted is pure form-follows-function, but I'm not as curious about your take on the aesthetics as I am on your opinion of the form factor. How do you use your current desk, and could you switch to something as minimal?
Enter a caption (optional)My current desk measures 80" x 32" and it's become a landing pad for crap. It's not even reference material, just random stuff that I need to deal with during the course of the day, and absent careful management the pile grows each week. For those of you with the same predilections, could you/would you work on a desk that did not allow for the accumulation of detritus? By dint of not providing a lot of surface area, the StandCrafted seems like it would enforce anti-clutter discipline.
Enter a caption (optional)Terbeest is betting the demand is there and has launched the project on Kickstarter. At press time the pledged amounts were not promising, with just $1,465 garnered towards at $70,000 target, but there's still over a month left. So: Do you reckon the demand is there, and that he'll make it? Or do you think desks have remained the size they are, independent of sitting/standing demands, for a reason?
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Comments
Very nice!... maybe not for everyone... but definitly is a really smart solution for small/commercial spaces... nice job!
As we progress with architecture, the industry is always adapting to keep itself relevant with its consumers. Lately, a lot of homes and building spaces have focused on removing walls and reducing closed spaces, opening up floor plans for a more airy feel.
Yea! OK, Maybe I'm a little biased.
This is one of the few Kickstarters I've seen in quite a while that seems like an honest and valid use of crowd funding. It's great that he shows his process and manufacturing capabilities up front.
Do you think the hands-on design activities of artists and designers will transition to digital media with the recent addition of tools such as the iPad Pro & Apple Pencil or even the Surface Pro? With a rotational drafting table that I've hinted at (sized just for an 13" tablet), do you think that will be a hit or should it be larger?
Very dependent on the designer. I use all process', and will go from analog to digital as needed. A small surface to work on would certainly suffice for the digital aspect of my work, but I do also like to spread print-outs across my work surface for review and comparison. Further more, I work with soft-goods and will sample ideas in-house on which I need a surface to cut/sew. That's where the idea of just having a secondary mobile work surface to roll up to my computer area would be helpful in those instances where spread-out room is desired, but not always required.
Actually, spending too much time standing can be more damaging than sitting. It's still an awesome project, I just don't see it as a real alternative to the office chair, when you need to spend several hours there.
You can definitely add a chair / stool / leaning seat at any time. All the modules slide in and out in seconds. I plan to add an animated gif to the kickstarter page soon to show how easy it is. The desk is definitely meant to be flexible for any user. Thanks for the comment!
hmm i think like it,
Isn't this pretty similar to the sturdy mobile workstands and carts used in the medical industry? For example, the Nurture Pocket product from Modo Carts incorporates most of these features. If there was a way for a cart to mate or lay flat against a wall you could have the best of both worlds, and not be stuck looking at a wall.
Just gotta say, this is the comment thread I dream of reading: Intelligent, troll-free discussion of the actual utility and feasibility of the design, insightful analysis of the UX factors, and constructive examples of your personal usage preferences. Thanks to all who contributed/will contribute, for reminding me that there's still some corners of the internet where we can have discussions like these.
I like this design idea for dedicated production line/output computers, bookstores or places with complimentary internet usage or product interaction kiosks etc... But as a workstation - meh. I need some counter space for notebooks, sketches project related collateral of all sorts.
Also, Even if they don't reach their funding goal, I hope they keep small production runs handy or even do a made to order business model. All they need is a 4x6 ft cnc router.
I've built a wall-mounted standing desk for myself. Not quite as minimal, my 40" x 20" x 5.5" desk included a box-like section for stowing laptop and "junk" like an external hard drive and the inevitable pieces of of paper which enters my life.
This Standcrafted design is clean enough in its Tron-like spinal style, but forces one to have a separate storage solution for such paper. An additional secure shelf for an external hard drive would seem like a must for anyone working with significant creative assets like heavy design files or video.
The UX issue, as Scott mentions, is the wall view, and the feeling of being "boxed in". For me, this was partially mitigated by the fact my desk was right next to a window to the right of me as I worked there, and the fact I tend to be ADD. You definitely need a high task chair/stool to alternate from standing to sitting if you are spending any length of time at a standing desk, so the project could include a photo with one of those.
The broader stumbling block, especially for crowdfunding, is the fact that most people don't want to deal with wall mounting for two reasons. One is that it can be tricky, depending on the type of wall you are dealing with, and two is that if you rent, you will eventually move, and then have to patch up the wall and do it all over again. Rearranging your space implies the same. So this product tends to target the handyman type.
Price point seems fair for bamboo and maple versions in a limited series/distribution scenario. Plastic version would be strategic to have under $500. Given the narrower market of this type of product vs. freestanding standing desks, $70K would seem to require this to go somewhat viral. I wish the founders luck.
Patrick, good point on the wall-mounting; a secondary video demonstrating what this entails on various surfaces might be helpful for the layperson. It's easy to forget that those of us with some type of design or installation experience take these skills for granted, but I've heard of folks trying to mount flatscreens to sheetrock--without finding the studs or using anchors! For the brick, a video demonstrating a masonry bit, how to drill without getting "wander" and the right type of anchor to use might be helpful.
Great comments! We're planning on a photo of me (or someone more photogenic) in a sitting position and a video of a quick 10 minute drywall installation very soon (hopefully a brick wall too).
I like the concept and execution on it. But I just couldn't stand to be staring at a wall for all that terribly long. At my desk now I've grown tired of having the monitor against the wall and have moved things around to where I have something past the screen to look at.
The use posture doesn't seem all too different from what you see in like a mainframe or server or CNC machine or inside a ship (or a videogame Mars fortress) where workstations are just embedded into the wall or equipment at standing height.
I'd be more tempted by something free of the wall but similarly minimal, though I can understand the need for wall mounting in terms of space saving.
Understandable. It's certainly not for all people or their environments. I have mine mounted right next to a large window overlooking a crowded city street. I'm also thinking about some wall plant hangers on the other side of my monitor.