Adaptive Desk

Owning the home office during the pandemic.

Design
Research
Assembly

Cognitive (over)load

By February 2020, 46% of businesses had implemented remote work policies as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Forbes, 2020) For many individuals, this meant they needed to “carve out a space to work in a room that serves a different purpose”

This type of sub-division can be taxing, and many people found it difficult to accomplish tasks in a space that were meant to serve another purpose.

In our own home, my wife and I struggled to set up full-time offices for the unknown future. We decided to build something to help us adapt.

Constraint driven design

There were three things we knew :

  • We had no timeline for returning to the office.

  • We didn’t want to over-spend on office furniture.

  • We would need a guest room again someday.

We wanted to furnish the office with piece(s) that could be re-used as part of a guest’s stay; but we needed the room to look and feel like an office until then.

The most space-consuming part of our “office” were the desks. They took up valuable floorspace and couldn’t be easily disassembled or hidden.

So, we narrowed our scope to the desk. We brainstormed ways to make the desk adapt to the needs of the room, finally settling on a desk that could double as a “headboard” for an air mattress.

(Remote) Woodworking

We chose not to start from “zero.” We found a butcher-block countertop that was roughly the width of a queen-size air mattress. (another space-saving conversion) Using our apartment’s deck, we set to work finishing the piece with stain and a water-based acrylic clear coat.

Once the countertop was polished to perfection, we installed 200lb folding hinges to mount the desk to the wall, allowing it to fold flat like a headboard. We also installed threaded inserts so we could use removeable hairpin legs for secondary support away from the wall.

Final thoughts

This desk was our primary workstation during the pandemic. It gave us the space we needed to get our jobs done, and gave our family space to stay when restrictions were lifted.

We still use the desk. Now homeowners, my wife and I have a newfound appreciation for making our spaces work for us; and this desk makes it so we don’t have to choose between an “always” office or guest room.