The
office environment is a unique one. It requires apparently conflicting elements
of comfort and concentration, or of creative inspiration and hard work. As a
result, designing one can stretch the powers of the interior designer to the
limit.
It
is important to remember that most elements of office furniture have a specific
practical purpose. However contemporary the look, the desk must be the right
height for a computer monitor or laptop bench, and must comfortably accommodate
the keyboard, other technological hardware and extraneous items used by the
worker when he or she is at his or her station. Any furniture designed
specifically for the use andstorage of satellite hardware such as printers and
scanners must be at a relevant height and have the space to allow proper
operation of the item in question.
One
of the key design considerations for contemporary office furniture is cable
storage. Even in the wireless household, power cables exist – and of course the
wireless base unit from which signals are sent is plugged both into the mains and
the telephone line. A desk or a suite of office furniture is therefore required
to have access to multiple plug points and at least one phone line.
Most
satellite hardware still uses wires to connect to a mother PC or laptop. This
includes printers and scanners, as well as mobile phone docking stations and
extraneous hardware. So the modern office furniture piece must also have the
ability to connect multiple objects, some of which may be quite large but have
short cables, to a central station.
The
overall design of an office must take the weird cross section of relaxation and
intense concentration already mentioned, into account. Access to natural light
is good, particularly where that access is gained through a window through
which the office worker can look. Taking visual breaks from a screen is healthy
for the eyes – and looking out at gardens and other houses, or anything
interesting beyond the house itself, is important for rejuvenating the
concentration.
In
many cases, an office requires a number of supporting documents, reference
works and stationery. Contemporary office furniture may therefore be required
to provide storage space for books; for the hard copies of important software;
and for various items of backup storage media. A hard drive bank is not
uncommon; again, space must be made here for connecting the drives to the
relevant ports.
Power
consumption on the modern office can be quite frightening. If the office is
designed from scratch it may be important for the designer to specify a large
number of mains plugs. By specifying mains plugs, rather than running extension
pugs from a smaller number of sockets, the designer allows the electrician to
account for the massive power use by putting the proper number of breaker
switches into the fuse board. This significantly reduces the risk of power and
equipment failure.
If
an office is to contain a server, it may be necessary to incorporate an
acoustically deadened cabinet into the room – or to run connections from the
office to such a cabinet located elsewhere on the property. In either case,
arrangements may also be made for backup power to run the server in the event
of a minas failure. This is particularly true if the server is running a
business or managing its website.
Leona Timms is
an interior designer. She creates bespoke office designs
using contemporary office furniture and equipment.