San Antonio, Texas, is home to organizer Vanessa Hayes — as well as the newly-built backyard office shed she now shares with her husband Dan, a technology/marketing/media consultant. See the space they customized for their work lives and get some tips on how to make working from home with your spouse easier in this interview and tour of their office, which nicely features a pair of our SAYL chairs in black and white. Read more
Cheery, streamlined, and as comfortably designed as the loft he calls home, the small rented office of educational consultant and academic tutor Maurice LaBonte offers him the chance to keep his personal and work spaces separate. “Renting is an…indulgence and a necessary professional requirement,” he explains to Apartment Therapy Tech. “I enjoy leaving the house to go to work…It makes me happy.” Get a quick look at his Chicago-based office space (including a glimpse of his vintage Eames molded armchair), then get the full tour at Apartment Therapy. Read more
1. “Herman Miller meets Wonder Woman” on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Tumblr.
2. A bookcase that magically stores chairs and tables at PSFK.
3. ”Are You Spending 1,000 Hours Preparing for Your Next Job?” at the Harvard Business Review.
4. LA Observed’s short chat with Allon Schoener, author and periodic guest at the Eames House in the 1950s.
5. It comes equipped with Wi-Fi … could you use this as an occasional outdoor office? (Via Design Milk)
6. These home-office solutions for cords, cables, and devices at Apartment Therapy.
7. The Selby’s tour of jewelry designer Philip Crangi’s NYC home and studio.
8. Did you see our SAYL Chair on True Blood? (Via latimes.com)
9. This discussion about design knockoffs at last weekend’s Dwell on Design home show. (Via Dwell)
10. Hither and Thither’s coverage of our Pop-Up Shop in Soho, NYC. There’s still time to stop by — it’s open through this Sunday, July 1.
Here’s a look at what we’ve been reading for the past few days. (What about you? Leave us a link to your favorite post of the week in the comments section.)
1. A hidden home office created from a spare closet, featured on the Home & Garden blog of the Los Angeles Times.
2. “A Love Letter to Plywood,” a short video by sculptor Tom Sachs, in which he declares plywood “a delicious wood sandwich” (via swissmiss).
3. 20 gadgets to help you make the most of the summer — including some great items to help you take your work outdoors — from Netted.
4. Colorful ideas for waking up your home-office decor from Real Living.
5. An artistic way to deal with unsightly cords at Dwell.
6. Architect Sigund Larsen‘s “Shrine” project, a mini multitasking storage solution, detailed at Architizer.
7. Have you ever tried to go paperless in the office? (Via Apartment Therapy).
8. We spy a smart white Eames molded plastic side chair in the home of Mary Jo and Steve Hoffman at Design*Sponge (and also in the photo above, by Mark Andrew of Studio 306).
9. The Ridge House, a rural Canadian hideaway designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, at ArchDaily.
10. A fascinating aerial photo tour of New York City’s rooftops at Co.Design.
Photo: Design*Sponge / Mark Andrew of Studio 306
“At Work,” a blog from the Wall Street Journal, just reported on a new study by The Conference Board research group about the rise in telecommuting. “The number of employees who work remotely has jumped significantly over the last decade, nearly doubling among all full-time, non-self-employed U.S. workers,” it states. Moreover, 84% of people who worked remotely, either from home or another location, did so at least once a week. That’s up from 72% in 2008.
Along with these growing stats, the research offers a few of the pros that result from working out of a home office, such as increased focus, which can lead to better productivity. Cons, of course, included feeling out of the loop and burned out because of the fuzzy line between “home” and “work.”
Are you part of this growing trend? What are the positives? The negatives? Let us know in the comment section, then take a look at a few thoughts from some telecommuters (and some in-the-know self-employed workers) we’ve featured here on Lifework. Read more
Where we’ve spent our time for the last seven days.
1. This thoughtful interview with industrial designer Yves Béhar (creator of our SAYL chair) from Tastemakers@Google on YouTube.
2. “30 Eye-Catching Interiors Featuring The Iconic Eames Lounge Chair” at Freshome.
3. This tour of Vitamin, a design and marketing firm in Baltimore (via baltimore.citybizlist.com).
4. A look at how tech is creating workplaces everywhere — and shrinking the office — from USA TODAY.
5. “The Wit and Wisdom of Alexander Girard” at Metropolis Magazine.
6. Tips for converting space into a home office from Arizona Daily Star.
7. Back in March, we featured a post on Sinuous Guitars — and we’re glad to see Greg Opatik’s Eames-inspired instruments continuing to create buzz (via Rapid Growth).
8. “The 15 Things Charles and Ray Eames Teach Us” at DARE+.
9. Huffington Post’s photos of the George Nelson exhibit opening this weekend at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
10. Apartment Therapy’s coverage of our Alexander Girard exhibit at NeoCon 2012 (where we were very proud to be recognized with multiple awards).
Photo: Janel Laban for Apartment Therapy
Apartment Therapy Tech’s feature on this workspace posted on the office-space showcase site Where We Do What We Do got us spending a few more hours than expected touring home offices around the globe. Here are a few select settings that we especially appreciated. Read more
When creating last February’s look at Eames molded plastic chairs in offices, we started to notice something: while the chairs are available in a range of 10 different colors, our white shell seats seem to be particularly popular right now (like in the Portland, Oregon workspace of the creative agency Juliet Zulu, above). Take a look at a few more setups using Charles and Ray Eames’ simple white-hued seating with the waterfall-front edges. Read more
When you work regularly from a home office, it’s imperative to have the solutions you need to get a job done: your tools, tech, and supplies at the ready; the right amount of space to successfully complete a given task; comfortable, supportive seating (something we know a thing or two about); and a touch of personality to make long days (or nights) in the space worth it.
When two people share the same home office, however, that’s when things can get complicated. In a recent post about a George Nelson-inspired home from Apartment Therapy Tech, we showed you an office designed to easily accommodate a husband-and-wife team in Austin. Here are few more smart ways we’ve seen couples, partners, and friends tackle the same issue. Read more
UK photographer Will Robson-Scott‘s latest work, called In Dogs We Trust, concentrates on canines and their owners. While Robson-Scott was interested in exploring the affinity owner’s have with their dogs I was drawn to the series because many of the shots cover people in their home offices. It’s well worth a look – if not for the interesting workspaces then for the wonderful dogs.
