A desk of one’s own
The importance of individual space and the ability to shut oneself in and shut everyone else out was epitomized in Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own. The inability to achieve privacy, she recognized (specifically for women) impacted upon how much it was possible to achieve in the creative and spiritual realms of life.
People who work from home recognize this too. Many set out working on the dining room table or on a shared PC in the corner of a room and find it’s simply unworkable. A room with a door that can be closed, a desk and chair, and a single-user computer are all vital to productive work and good time management. It’s interesting that, although this used to be the norm in many workplaces, particularly professional offices such as law firms, largely, it’s no longer the case. The need for teamwork and approachable management has seen ‘open-door policies’ and open-plan offices – never forgetting hotdesking – proliferate.
It works, but it’s hard to imagine celebrating a famous desk in amongst other workspaces that all look identical. Hard, but not impossible. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, works surrounded by his colleagues right in the buzz of things within the 1 million square feet of office space over a campus of 57 acres in Palo Alto. Three years ago Zuckerberg posted a picture of his desk on Facebook itself, with rows of desks and Apple products lined up into the distance. Curiously, as Sheryl Sandberg reported in her book Lean, Zuckerberg likes to keep the office temperature at a chilly 15°C. However, with a new brand-new Frank Gehry-designed building, it remains to be seen what the Facebook chief’s new workspace pad will look like.
For inspiration for the ambitious, whose desk is an integral part of their work, here’s a list of desks and workspaces belonging to some of the most famous creatives and leaders: each as unique as the work they produce.
Roald Dahl’s shed-office
Ahead of the game when it comes to now-popular, on-trend shed-working, Roald Dahl was using this set-up years ago, from 1975 to 1990. Following on from the likes of Mark Twain, who built a garden study that he called his ‘cozy nest’, Dahl used his own shed just for writing, and it goes to show that small can be beautiful – or at least practical and cosy. With two small desks either side of an easy wingback chair, as well as a filing cabinet, anglepoise lamp, telephone, and pretty full-up ashtray, the legendary children’s writer had everything he needed to hand. And to feed his incredible imagination, on one of the desks were spread out trinkets, photos, and oddities, including, reputedly, part of his own hip bone that had been removed. To keep warm, there was a sleeping bag for his legs and blankets. Perhaps the low temperature is the one thing that Dahl’s and Zuckerberg’s offices have in common…
Pixar’s shed offices
The team at Pixar get a say in the space they want to work in. The Steve Jobs influence is everywhere in terms of creativity, and this extends to letting the artists have a free reign in designing the space they work in. Each animator can choose his or her own environment.
Pixar provides the walls (taking the shape of what could be called shed-pods, all constructed on-site), desk, chair, and computer equipment, but the designer is responsible financially for the interior decoration. This means that, walking around the studios, you may encounter fairy lights strung across the ceiling, a Tiki cabin, or a shed with a whole upstairs added. Roald Dahl may have fitted in well.
However, the pièce de Pixar resistance is, of course, John Lasseter’s office. Lasseter, the Chief Creative Officer of the company, took over the office, which formerly belonged to Jobs, when Disney bought out Pixar. Lasseter’s overwhelming collection of toys meant that he had to extend his own office into the adjoining assistant’s office. Toys line the walls, the floors, stand in precarious piles, an array of Skittles colours and cartoon legends. And there’s more in storage.
Churchill’s standing desk
Standing desks have never been so popular. Facebook reportedly has 350 of them. The health benefits of standing rather than sitting have been researched and published, and sitting for more than six hours a day is considered bad practice in health terms – although of course standing for hours a day has its own potential issues. One solution is to alternate between the two, or have an adjustable desk. Many famous people have worked standing up, including Leonardo da Vinci, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill. The wartime prime minister wrote his speeches standing up at a standing desk, cigar in mouth, with his papers spread neatly along the wooden angled desk.
Einstein’s left-behind office
Einstein’s office, if we’re being honest, looks like a teacher’s classroom ransacked by a vengeful student. A picture taken of the space, on the day Einstein died, rather poignantly shows a leather chair, still imprinted with the shape of its occupier, as though the scientist has just popped out for a minute. The desk is barely visible under papers, paperweights, and books, while the blackboard behind is a scribble of maths. Rather oddly, on one side of the blackboard is a set of shelves, neatly stacked with books; on the other, a set of shelves with jumbled piles of books: the neatness versus the mess that maths often requires, and genius demands. As Einstein himself sums up: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
Woody Allen’s grown-up office
You wouldn’t automatically think of Woody Allen when you saw his desk-space. A room decorated with a simple, delicate floral wallpaper, and an array of wooden antique furniture, it’s hard to tell if this bright and airy room belongs to a man or a woman. We know it’s a writer’s space thanks to the ancient typewriter on the desk, while the huge picture of a beehive right above it hints at someone a little off-beat. The typewriter, apparently, is the same one Allen has used since he was 16 years old, for all his writing. It’s quite easy to see how the high ceilings, rug-adorned wooden floors and peaceful atmosphere are conducive to coming up with unique works that have gone down in film history.
Author Frazer Williams, Director of Morgan Pryce London
