People will frequently justify spending some cash on a nice bed or mattress because it’s where we spend such a significant part of our lives. But what about desks? After all, with the average working week being somewhere around the 40-hour mark, this equates to about 2,000 hours per year that we spend at our workstations.
That’s where British designer John Tomalin-Reeves comes in. As the designer of the First Class lounge at London’s Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 (trust us, it’s nice!), Tomalin-Reeves recently turned his attention to reimagining the desk — with the resulting Aerodesk being both impressively high-tech and pleasingly minimalist.
“You’ve got to try and appeal to the Apple part of people’s brains,” he told Digital Trends. “When people buy an Apple product, it’s not a totally rational decision; they just really respond to the product. There’s a seduction to it. The automotive industry also does this really well. If you’re sitting in the cockpit of a high-end car, it’s glossy and slick. We want to be the Tesla of the desk world. When you’re designing a product, I think your goal should be to make people drool like a dog looking at a steak.”
Aong the highlights are the desk’s hydraulic legs, which allow it to raise and lower with the touch of a button, so it works equally well as a sitting or standing desk. According to Tomalin-Reeves, standing for just three hours each day is equivalent to running 10 marathons per year in terms of calories burned.
Another nifty selling point is the aptly named LightBar that runs the length of the back of the desk, and can re-create the entire spectrum of color to suit every mood. It can produce daylight frequencies, which have been shown to increase levels of energy and productivity.
Finally, there are plug sockets, USB ports, a Bluetooth speaker and a Qi charger, which combine to make Aerodesk a connected desk for the digital age.
“We’re now looking to further improve the product by adding things like inductive surfaces so you don’t need wires,” Tomalin-Reeves said. “We’re even interested in de-ionizing the air around your desk, a bit like an air purifier. The goal is to create a desk that doesn’t feel like a boring work desk. It’s not anonymous; you can really own it.”
For a starting price of around $1,850, that is.
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