Ideal Live/Work Space: Carola Zwick of Studio 7.5

Carola Zwick is one quarter of Studio 7.5. They designed Setu for Herman Miller and also the Mirra chair.  Today Carola shares her ideal live/work space.

The laptop is my swiss army knife, it turned me into a total nomad. It’s reflecting and displaying all the different threads of action on a vertical surface in front of me. We call this “Auftischraum” (this would be translated as “creating an instant space on the table”). This is true for the studio, where we don’t have dedicated desks, but settle in a spot that fits the task, e.g. if you need absolute silence you pick the big table in our new “Einstein room” (that’s the name of the coffee brand neigboring that room, but fits pretty nicely to the purpose of the space as well).

If you want to exchange your ideas with your collegues or at least don’t want to miss what’s going on, you rather pick a spot on the big dining table in the modelshop/kitchen of our studio.

The same is true for my work style at home. I am wandering around, picking a spot on the couch or on the balcony, depending on the lighting conditions, the temperature and the mood. Only if I need to focus for a longer period of time for something urgent or serious, I pick a table and a serious task chair. The only odd habit: at home I need to put my feet up to think: so even when sitting on a Mirra chair, there is another chair on the opposite side of the table to put my feet up.

A new habit I now develop: I try to “suck” every artifact into the computer, because otherwise it tends to get lost due to my habit of deserting every work place after a while