Book cover designer and lifestyle blogger Anna Dorfman showed us not one, but two home offices: the first in a small rental apartment in Brooklyn, and the second in upstate New York, where she and her husband are slowly renovating an 1891 Victorian row house. (Photo: Anna Dorfman)

Architectural photographer David Lauer gave us a tour of his new mid-century-built home in Denver, complete with a home office centered around bold color choices, like his green Mirra Chair. (Photo: David Lauer)

This weekend-getaway workspace belonged to J3 Productions and Happy Mundane’s Jonathan Lo, who is normally based in Orange County, CA, but instead opted to rent a “second office” near the beach in San Diego for the summer. (Photo: Jonathan Lo)

A sunny view and an original Eames Wire Chair passed down by her grandparents made up this tour from photographer-turned-designer Jennifer Levy of CAVdesign. (Photo: Jennifer Levy)

Artist Laura Hughes let us take a look at her combination home/workspace (Aeron Chair included) in the middle of Manhattan. (Photo: Laura Hughes)

Makoto Mizutani and Ben Luddy — better known as the brains behind multidisciplinary design practice Scout Regalia — let us take a peek at their living space/company headquarters in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Photo: Scout Regalia)

We found out just how organized the workspace of a professional organizer can be with this step inside the home office of Justin Klosky, founder and Creative Director of O.C.D. Experience, a bi-coastal organizing service. (Photo: Justin Klosky)

Photographer Clark Lara introduced us to a space filled with modern Herman Miller designs — check out the Embody Chair, Eames Molded Plastic Chairs, and Eames Storage Unit just in the one photo above — as well as his scene-stealing dog, Cooper. (Photo: Clark Lara)

Singer, songwriter, producer, photographer, cinematographer, and director Thomas Piper Jr. showed us around his home workspace in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. (Photo: Thomas Piper Jr.)

Food writer and co-author of The Kimchi Cookbook Olga Massov gave us a glance at her Brooklyn home office (as well as her well-stocked kitchen). (Photo: Amy Feezor).

Our SAYL chairs fit nicely in the newly-built backyard office shed shared by organizer Vanessa Hayes and her husband Dan, a technology/marketing/media consultant, in San Antonio, TX. (Photo: Vanessa Hayes)

Kiwi-born and London-based designer and illustrator Marcia Mihotich — who collaborates with the likes of Industrial Facility and other arts-related organizations — opened the doors to her live/work space, which includes a cushy Eames Soft Pad Management Chair. (Photo: Marcia Mihotich)

How long have you worked from home? And where is home? For nine years. London EC1. It’s an area that is a lively mixture of residential and business, so even though I work at home, it doesn’t feel like it.

How would you define your aesthetic? Modernist, but not at the expense of content. I try to be informationally organized, but visually interesting.

How do you keep your work space organized? Books on the shelf. Papers and notes for current projects on the desk next to the computer. Everything else in boxes along the wall. And unfortunately the thousands of things that don’t fit into those categories in piles on the floor. I suspect, like many designers, I have extreme hoarding tendencies and can amass all sorts of things ‘that might just come in handy.’ However, if someone is coming for a meeting, I will clean up fairly ruthlessly in order to give the illusion of a calm, ordered, desirable environment.

When you set up your home office what did you have to keep in mind? Were there any particular obstacles to overcome? I think my office is the nicest room in the house, with big floor-to-ceiling windows — and as I have to sit here all day, it should be! When I started working from home, my son was very small, so it had to be somewhere that could be cut off so he couldn’t spot me. (It’s worth pointing out he was being looked after by someone while I was working; I wasn’t just hiding.) We did a bit of space re-configuring, built a wall, and now there are two doors between the office and the rest of our home. But the interior of room evolved — it hasn’t been planned or designed as such. I just needed a desk and computer and got on with it. Maybe it’s a bit like a lot of people in fashion who wear black; I expend most of my creative energy on other people.

Is there any piece of home office furniture you covet right now? I will confirm the designer stereotype and say the Eames Desk Unit.

What desk accessory can’t you do without? A box (not strictly a desk accessory, I guess). I always seem to need one to put something in, either pencils and drawing things or samples or just for bits. I am only just beginning to realize there is no perfect box. The other thing is one of those really heavy metal sellotape dispensers. I don’t have one as I can’t face carrying it back from the stationery shop, but I really want one. Perhaps I should order one online.

What would you change about your work space? More storage, of course. But I don’t want to see it, so it would have to be invisible. If that’s not possible, a walk-in stationery cupboard would be really brilliant.

You established your firm in 2002. What led to that point? For the previous 18 or so years, I had worked in different design companies. When my son Hal was born, I didn’t want to go back full-time so I started working for myself — initially around three days a week and now pretty much full-time again. But it’s my full time, not someone else’s. But maybe the most important thing is I wanted to choose who I worked for and with.

What drove your decision to live in London? I was born in Auckland, NZ. When I was 21, I wanted to go to London and work in design. In the early 1990s, it seemed to me to be where lots of interesting design work was happening. So I did, and I am still here.

How does working from home impact your work? It’s really nice. I don’t have to spend any time commuting. I spent many years working in offices with lots of other people, which I loved — but I don’t miss it now. I spend a lot of time collaborating with clients or other designers, so uninterrupted design time still feels like a bit of luxury.

What and who inspires you? When I was a student and when I started working, it was designers or artists, because I was still learning what design was and needed to see lots of visual things and understand them. Now it can be almost anyone or anything, from car boot sales to fossils.

What about your work has changed since becoming a parent? As I have much less time, I have to be extremely compartmentalized about everything. With design, playing around is a good thing — you often need that extra time to explore things. But as I have to be very efficient with my time, there isn’t as much time to do that as I would like, so I tend visualize things in my head or try to work out solutions to things when I am not at work. This probably makes me look a bit pre-occupied a lot of the time.

What drives your creative decisions? Problem-solving.

Photos: Marcia Mihotich

1. “How a home work space works best” at The Globe and Mail (featuring a pair of our Setu Chairs, above, in a photo by Barry Calhoun Photography).

2. Chairsmith’s electrifying photos of their recent Eames acquisition.

3. Fashion designer Leyla Piedayesh’s studio, which includes a Magis Chair_One by Konstantin Gricic (via Monoqi)

4. Daniel Kanter’s thoughtful post on his visit to Case Study House No. 8 in L.A. (via Manhattan Nest).

5. On a related note, these watercolor paintings based on the architectural photographs of Julius Shulman in the Los Angeles Times.

6. Could this save the iPad’s “lousy typing”? (via Co.Design).

7. “Kindergarten Design Grows Up: Contemporary Nursery-School Projects” at Architonic.

8. “How to Thank Your Employees in Only 8 Words” from Inc.

9. Apartment Therapy’s roundup of 10 office chairs from their Tech Tours (we spy the best of the best: Mirra, Embody, Eames Aluminum Group Management Chair, Aeron, Eames Soft-Pad Management Chair…)

10. This impressive mid-century-modern collection in the Michigan home of architect Robert C. Metcalf (via AnnArbor.com).

Photo: Barry Calhoun Photography / The Globe and Mail