George Costanza was ahead of his time when he commissioned Conrad (or Connie or Con, whichever you prefer) to expand the space below his desk to make a little nap nook. Studies, like a recent one from the University of Michigan, suggest mid-day snoozes can cut down on frustration and make you more alert and less prone to mistakes.
But napping at work is pretty much a no-no for most of us. Zappos, Nike, and Ben & Jerry’s all provide nap rooms for corporate employees, but they’re more of an exception than the norm. Perhaps this bed-desk combo will change some minds?
Greek design firm Studio NL created the 1, 6 S.m. of Life, which is tragically not for sale. And its origins come not from the big GC of Seinfeld fame, but from the grind of graduate school at Columbia University. “It was an inspiration that came from exhausting working hours of my classmates that did not have an apartment close to the university,” the designer Athanasia Leivaditou said in an interview after winning the ‘Unexpected Design’ prize for furniture and homeware in the A’Design Award & Competition. The desk’s side angles out to provide head support when it’s time catch some z’s, and there’s even a little storage nook (for an alarm clock, pillow, teddy bear…).
Of course, the darker side to the bed-desk is that it may lead to people sleeping in the office overnight, catching a few hours of sleep in between back-to-back work marathons. But for now, we prefer to think them as the dream of the future, when we can all grab a little rest mid-day, preschool style.
And if napping really is healthy, maybe one day we’ll all have standing-sleeping desks.
