office

Karl Lagerfeld’s Inspired Ideas

After legendary designer Karl Lagerfeld passed away in February, we looked back into our archive for good ideas any of us might steal and employ…

Disappear Visual Clutter with Uniform Cardboard Boxes a la Laura Handler + Andy Warhol)

If you have a lot of small items, projects or papers to store, and an eye that is pained by visual busyness, I recommend a strategy used by designer Laura Handler and Andy Warhol:

The FlexiSpot Sit Stand Desk Changed My Life

After 2 months of test-driving a Flexispot Sit Stand Desk, I’m smitten, fitter and thinner. Here’s my honest review, with pros, cons and what to look out for.

Writing Reading Dreaming Room in a Closet (Ocean Vuong)

Reclusive poet Ocean Vuong discovered that a closet can make the perfect writing space. So we hunted down examples for a tiny room that can serve many unexpected purposes.

Great Ideas from a Ridiculously Minimalist Apartment

The Times T Magazine featured ANOTHER perfectly minimalist apartment with no sign of a human being in it. Still, we culled some good ideas from Danish designer Oliver Gustav’s very gray Copenhagen apartment.

Workspace: A Cheap Stylish File Cabinet Strategy

While planning the office portion of the Laboratory’s renovation, I had to be lean and efficient, having spent some serious money on a sliding wall to make it all disappear. I happily used a strategy that had served me (and about a million designers) for years: a desk made of pedestal file cabinets and a…

Inspiring Messy Workspaces of Famous Creatives

(Video link here.) They Might Be Giant’s just released their new song I Made a Mess, which is a sort of homage to something we strongly believe (#12 in our Manifesto): Making a mess is an essential part of improvising. Here, then, is our visual ode to wondrous in-flux workspaces of some spectacular creatives to view while you…

Disguises for Computer Cables + Other Ugly Stuff

As we scroll through design sites, we periodically spot some new gadget for keeping ugly computer wires in check: reels that wind them up, dongles that collect them behind your desk… Perhaps the BEST improvisation we’ve seen is in Christoph Niemann’s workspace. The inspired illustrator/artist/author disguised an ugly black cable by placing a black and white image…

Niemann’s Workspace: Plywood Picture Rails + Other Good Ideas

During a visit to Christoph Niemann’s website recently, we found ourselves smitten with the images of his workspace. They were full of decidedly straight-forward, practical ideas with a sort of deconstructed charm: back-to-back work tables on simple pipe frames, articulating task lights, flat files that serve as additional work surfaces. Niemann wrote us that the…

Magazine Page Envelopes + the PERFECT Multipurpose Business Card

Pamela Hovland, who designed Improvised Life’s first site design, periodically sends us notes in improvised envelopes she makes out of pages torn from magazines and catalogs, whenever she comes across a compelling visual. We were charmed to get her Spring greeting in the form of two letters, both with images of people LEAPING on the outside,…

Tyvek Carryall-Envelope via FedEx

We recently needed a sturdy envelope to carry some papers in our big satchel. Hmmm. What to use? FedEx envelopes are made of Tyvek but they have all that terrible writing on them. NOT. What would happen if we turned one inside out so it became plain white, and then crumpled it to turn it…

Tiny Transforming Apartment Yields One Big Idea

(Video link HERE.) We find this video of a tiny apartment* in which each piece of furniture transforms into something else strangely compelling, all the while feeling that having to transform EVERYTHING in our place would drive us mad. It did give us some ideas, one in particular that solves a design problem we been struggling…

A Rusty Corrugated Shed with a Modern Interior

In our continueing search for examples of the incorporation of organic and decayed materials with modern functionality, we present Australian architect Raffaello Rosselli‘s lovely repurposing a corroding tin shed in Sydney to create a small office and studio apartment.

Achille Castiglioni’s Inspiring Casa d’Oggi

In 1956 Italian industrial designer Achille Castiglioni created “COLORI E FORME NELLA CASA D’OGGI”, the installation of a living room at Villa Olmo, a neoclassical villa located in the city of Como, northern Italy. When we saw images of it, we flipped. It is such a far cry from the sterile interiors we see so often today; it’s…

Cool, Practical Flat File Beds

Tobias Wong’s inspired mattress on a grouping of pushed-together 2-drawer lateral files has long been an inspiration for our imaginings and phanta-designs for beds built on file cabinets. But, until recently, we hadn’t considered possibilities in the realm flat-files.

Daybooks with Custom Covers to Mark Where You Are or Are Going

Marella Consolini, former Chief Operating Officer of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, is one of the many very interesting Improvised Life readers we’ve come to know and be amazed by. Somehow years ago, an email exchange started and continued until we feel like she is an old friend, who we happen to have never met in person. In…

Nathan Frey’s Briliant Modular Workspace

The Frey Desk is a flexible modular workspace that quickly transitions from sitting desk to drafting table to standing desk to easel. It is decidedly brilliant and, to us, pretty homely. Nevermind. We LOVE Frey’s design thinking…

Cheap, Portable Lightweight Laptop Stand (Kickstarter)

When we first saw this cardboard laptop stand we thought: Who needs that? We can just rig a stack of books to raise our laptop. Then we saw it in action and thought of all the places it would be useful.

A Cheap, Easy Solution to Standing Desk Leg Fatigue

We know a lot of people who have created standing desks and love them (and we’ve posted over the years.) They generally feel energized because their bodies are, in effect, exercising just by standing as they work. They have, however, almost universally complained of one problem: leg fatigue. Standing for hours each day puts stress on…

A Cardboard Standing Desk to Buy or DIY

We recently came across another clever possibility in the realm of cardboard, one of our favorite materials, especially corrugated cardboard which is lightweight, durable, recyclable, and inexpensive: the cardboard standing desk. Recently a Kickstarter campaign, you can order one from Chairigami for $95, or copy the design analyzing the gif, below.

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