After ten years in the same location, I'm going to a new office space. It's just like moving home - fraught with all sorts of logistical problems. But as I've always liked working somewhere which has visual style - whether at home or off-site, I thought it was time to upgrade. If you spend eight hours a day (or more) at a desk or in front of a computer, there's no reason why you should be surrounded by all the clutter which litters most office spaces - the curling calenders, bulging folders, tangled wires, and trays of old visiting cards and paper clips that accumulate whilst your back's turned. I've started by throwing out all things that don't actually get used - the old conference papers, the government reports, the brochures, and free presentation folders and DVDs that clog your bookshelves. I've even bundled masses of unused pens and pencils and taken them to the charity shop, since i now use the elegant Schaffer set my daughter gave me for Xmas: two single, solid black objects on the solitary blank pad that sits alongside my keyboard.
I also thought I would do some research on how other people organised their working spaces, and came up with some excellent suggestions from the New York magazine, and a book I happened across in Manchester Deansgate Waterstone's, Working Spaces which is so good I'm going to review it in a separate posting.
The examples have several things in common, which is just the guidance I am looking for as I prepare for the Big Day. I've got the meeting room and kitchen-diner sorted out already, but I notice that designers and architects don't do clutter, they don't do carpets, and they don't feel compelled to display walls full of books which I've always done. This picture is the office of New York interior designer and architect Robert Couturier. Now that looks like a fair working environment to me.
Picture courtesy of Lisa Kereszi, New York magazine.
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