A basic principle of ancient Chinese Feng Shui is that you should not sit with your back to a space. In other words, you need to have your back against a wall, not your face facing a wall. I believe there is a reason for this. When there is a space behind you, human instinct forces you to pay a subconscious attention on that space (we are very alert to danger from behind), making it harder to concentrate on what is in front of you.
This principle emphasizes that there should be no space behind you. It has nothing to do with the wall or window in front of you. Those are just examples I used to explain according to the original post.
If you're concerned about the window's position, ancient Feng Shui advised the window should be located to your side, specifically on the side of the hand you don't use for writing. I think their reasoning was: this way, your head and the hand you use for writing won't cast shadows on the area where you're writing.
This is exactly what I was looking for in the original post. For those who think this is expensive but spend most of your waking hours at a desk, think of it as an investment in yourself.
The Vitsoe shelving is the goal for my office, but the initial cost is just so high. I know it will last me the rest of my life, and I should just have bought it when I first wanted it 15 years ago.
The chairs in front of the desk might be a pair of Vitsoe 620 Chair Programme.
It "looks" amazing. But you know, the real hard work is always done by the rag-looking, worn-out dirty, dented, scratched, faded-out, weak tools and work-benches. Not the shiny or rugged ones. Just like some notebooks that were used a 1000 times, with corners rounded by usage, not by design.
I would love a table that has uneven solid wood surface, with cracks and scratchers, burn marks, broken corners, worn-out edges, ink-marks everywhere, shaped out by the usage, not by design.
> I would love a table that has uneven solid wood surface, with cracks and scratchers, burn marks, broken corners, worn-out edges, ink-marks everywhere, shaped out by the usage, not by design.
It is possible to take care of your tools. My workbench looks used, but why would it have burn marks etc? I take care when I work. My office desk looks pristine because it's not a workbench.
Ehh, I find it difficult to distinguish between "taste" and "money". The shelving alone is a "contact us for pricing" situation. Premium items coupled with a too-clean-to-be-used work environment and natural light can do a significant lift in the "taste" department.
Prices are on the linked page, or in a full price list PDF it links to.
(Though the fetishisation of this shelving seems weird. Maybe as I grew up in the UK, but I associate it with every single public and office building. Every library, every office, every school. It's not what I'd choose for home.)
Having just moved house, this is fantastic inspiration.
To be fair, the huge window by the desk in the article makes it a naturally more appealing space than my own. But it’s enough to make me rethink the layout we have here so far. Especially since we want space for non digital projects too.
I also just moved to a new house, and am very happy this showed up.
I'm trying to do a complete furniture refresh for my office, declutter, and reorganize.
I'm lucky enough that there is a large window in the room, and I also only use one monitor. While I think my room is not as large as his, I can still make it work.
The one thing that was stopping me was cable management - but with clever furniture placement, I think the cables can mostly be hidden.
The non digital side makes total sense and I would love to mimic this
I do the same thing but with two physical desks, not just partitioning one desk into two logical desks.
Aside from the obvious advantage of more space it really helps put your mind in a different context when you are at a different location. In his example just moving over slightly would do nothing for me with the computer just arms length away and still in full view.
Yep, even more-so with a corner desk (L-shaped). Although there are times my work involves both papers and computer, and the quick swivel of a corner desk is great.
When you have two monitors, is your head always turned to one side? That always hurts my neck, so I wind up with the second monitor relegated to the side, where I never actually look at it.
I have three monitors. The left and right are turned vertically. They're all 30". So the main screen is in the center and I keep slack/email/web browser with docs/info on the left and usually Twitch DJs or Spotify on the right. So usually I'm looking forward but I look left briefly throughout the day.
I mean I love this kind of stuff but honestly the answer here is "have a huge honking office." I have a digital/reading split and there's actually a technical term for it: a mess.
What I like to do is think of the office less as a discrete space and more like a colonial, expansionist government - if I have sat in a chair for any amount of time, anything in a five-foot radius starts accruing stacks of books, paper pads, that kind of thing. My wife loves this! Sometimes it gets cold in a room and I leave it for a while and when I return months later it's like discovering an office from the past
I put my desk facing the middle of the room in a previous place a few years ago. I really liked it. Unfortunately it does require more space, though, which I don't currently have. If I ever have more space again I'll definitely be doing it again. It feels so much cosier. I don't like having my back to the door.
It's cheating, somewhat, to replace your desk with once that is as wide as two desks. I'm trying to figure out a way to do something similar with only one desk's worth of space.
My desk is only 48" wide (4 feet / 1.2 meters) and 30" deep (76 cm). This is enough space to have a massive mouse pad with a full sized keyboard and mouse on it with enough space to the right of it to comfortably sit and work with physical items. The desk also has a 32" 4k monitor and a 27" 1440p monitor, a rack sized audio processing unit, a USB audio interface and easy access to a drawing stylus. I don't even have monitor arms either to save space, they rest on stands. It's also deep enough where if I wanted more horizontal space I could move my keyboard and mouse forward and have plenty of room to sprawl out a few physical items.
Long story short, what kind of desk are you working with? I would consider my desk fairly small but it has lots of room for common things.
"Paper lantern" generally. Many inexpensive import shops carried them in the Before Times. Widely available now. They offer a soft ambient glow. Not ideal as a reading lamp (a bit too diffuse), but quite good for general room lighting.
It's not mentioned in the article but one thing I constantly struggle with when laying out my office is facing the desk toward the wall (like he originally had it) vs. facing toward the room (the "digital" side of his desk now). I don't like facing the wall but I find when I face the room the monitor totally blocks my view and it kind of looks like ass from the other side. This guy did way better cable management than I have done but still, you're looking at the back side of a monitor like a huge 2001 style monolith, especially if your monitor is black.
I still don't have a good solution for this, and curious what others are doing.
It's not an issue if your office is so small that no one is hanging out in front of it. :)
My wife only comes in to get printouts and supplies if I'm working, and if she's working (we share the "battle station" by switching out whose laptop is connected to the dock) I basically only go in there to quickly chat and walk around to the other side.
I place mine against the wall. It is most convenient this way because the Ethernet and power outlets are against the wall. In addition it means that the remainder of the space is large enough to be used for other things. My wife and I sit in the same room with a table with the 3D printer, home servers, and our various shared workbench tasks in between us. I sit by the window because I like sunlight and looking over the city, and while my wife does too my mood is more mercurially related to it than is hers.
Overall, power and data management dominate this entire arrangement. I have far too many devices each of which draw very little power but demand their own massive power connections. In the end, I will likely just rack most of them to make room for the second child we plan to have.
Walking into my office, you definitely see the backside of my dual monitor + audio interfaces + studio monitor speakers (I dabble in music production as well as tech) from the doorway.
I just live with it. I'm on the good side. The few times a day my wife needs to talk to me she just comes around to my side of the desk anyways.
A few scattered thoughts but a board with decoration or art of a similar size could be a nice cover, the other (more building required) would be to look if there’s a way you can fold down/away the monitor when not in use.
If you do good cable management it looks good imo. I have a desk arm with monitors attached on their VESA mounts. All the monitor cabling is attached to the mounts and goes into the cable management tray under the desk with everything else.
Adding another desk isn't "rethinking the desk". It's adding another desk with a slightly different purpose to the first desk. It's maximalism under the guise of insight.
Those where everywhere in the late 80s, complete with 80W incandescent light bulbs. I'm not suggestion that it can't catch fire, but even if it did wouldn't the paper would burn so fast that not enough heat is generated to ignite anything else?
Betcha there’s an LED in there creating less waste heat than the sunlight hitting it during the day.
Would you like to buy a fire insurance policy against the specific casualty of that lamp igniting from its light source and burning OP’s flat down? I’ll sell you one for a great price.
I don't know when's the last time you handled an Edison base LED bulb but they get really goddamn hot at the base where they cram all the improperly-cooled electronics into an area the size of a thumbnail.
You're literally arguing that rice paper is an acceptable material for electrical safety.
Frayed cord, damaged/defective socket, the list of potential ignition sources goes on but hey let's wrap it all in dry grass and kindling.
And in OP’s pictures, I totally believe that’s the bulb they’re using. Notice they have a desk lamp for up close work, and a freaking enormous window to let in sunlight. No need to flood the space with light with the hanging pendant thing.
If you're concerned about the window's position, ancient Feng Shui advised the window should be located to your side, specifically on the side of the hand you don't use for writing. I think their reasoning was: this way, your head and the hand you use for writing won't cast shadows on the area where you're writing.
A dream setup.
[1] https://www.vitsoe.com/us/606
[2] https://us.usm.com/collections/tables-desks
The chairs in front of the desk might be a pair of Vitsoe 620 Chair Programme.
I would love a table that has uneven solid wood surface, with cracks and scratchers, burn marks, broken corners, worn-out edges, ink-marks everywhere, shaped out by the usage, not by design.
So buy a table and start using it.
(Though the fetishisation of this shelving seems weird. Maybe as I grew up in the UK, but I associate it with every single public and office building. Every library, every office, every school. It's not what I'd choose for home.)
https://www.vitsoe.com/us/606/components
To be fair, the huge window by the desk in the article makes it a naturally more appealing space than my own. But it’s enough to make me rethink the layout we have here so far. Especially since we want space for non digital projects too.
I'm lucky enough that there is a large window in the room, and I also only use one monitor. While I think my room is not as large as his, I can still make it work.
The one thing that was stopping me was cable management - but with clever furniture placement, I think the cables can mostly be hidden.
The non digital side makes total sense and I would love to mimic this
Aside from the obvious advantage of more space it really helps put your mind in a different context when you are at a different location. In his example just moving over slightly would do nothing for me with the computer just arms length away and still in full view.
- A sitting desk for coding
- A standing desk for thinking and working on paper
There is something magical about standing while working on paper.
I’ve also found that this separation became more important to follow since the arrival of LLMs.
Maybe one day I could face my desk away from a wall.
What I like to do is think of the office less as a discrete space and more like a colonial, expansionist government - if I have sat in a chair for any amount of time, anything in a five-foot radius starts accruing stacks of books, paper pads, that kind of thing. My wife loves this! Sometimes it gets cold in a room and I leave it for a while and when I return months later it's like discovering an office from the past
Long story short, what kind of desk are you working with? I would consider my desk fairly small but it has lots of room for common things.
I have considered that as a dual setup (a desk towards room and a desk behind you up against wall)
Michele De Lucchi & Giancarlo Fassina (1987)
That was everywhere in my childhood.
<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=round+paper+lamp&iar=images&t=ftsa>
I still don't have a good solution for this, and curious what others are doing.
My wife only comes in to get printouts and supplies if I'm working, and if she's working (we share the "battle station" by switching out whose laptop is connected to the dock) I basically only go in there to quickly chat and walk around to the other side.
Overall, power and data management dominate this entire arrangement. I have far too many devices each of which draw very little power but demand their own massive power connections. In the end, I will likely just rack most of them to make room for the second child we plan to have.
I just live with it. I'm on the good side. The few times a day my wife needs to talk to me she just comes around to my side of the desk anyways.
I don't know how those things are legal, like building a computer case out of recycled newspaper clippings.
Would you like to buy a fire insurance policy against the specific casualty of that lamp igniting from its light source and burning OP’s flat down? I’ll sell you one for a great price.
You're literally arguing that rice paper is an acceptable material for electrical safety.
Frayed cord, damaged/defective socket, the list of potential ignition sources goes on but hey let's wrap it all in dry grass and kindling.
They pair it with a 2.8W bulb: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/solhetta-led-bulb-e26-450-lumen...
Less than an ancient phone charger. OP’s flat will be fine.
And in OP’s pictures, I totally believe that’s the bulb they’re using. Notice they have a desk lamp for up close work, and a freaking enormous window to let in sunlight. No need to flood the space with light with the hanging pendant thing.