4. Some thoughts on home office design
Intelligent home projects, such as the iHome concentrate on inserting computer and electronic components into an otherwise unchanged standard home design. More befits might cone from designing the layout of the home and furniture for "smarter" use. One area where this can be done is the "Home Office". Modern home designs may provide a small work table in a corridor or next to the kitchen sink and advertise this as the "home office", but these do not provide the storage, security, flexibility and access to power and communications needed for a useful home office.
Some issues
- Storage: The paperless office is not yet a reality and home office design rarely allow sufficient storage for office supplies, books, equipment and paperwork.
- Meeting table: A dinner table can do double duty as a work space and meeting table. Access to data and power will be required.
- TV display: A large screen TV can double as a computer display for small group presentations. This can be a low cost CRT screen, a high cost large format projector or plasma screen is not required.
There are a range of pre-built and modular home office furniture items available. These have major limitations:
- Inflexible design: The units are designed with special fitting for a slide out keyboard, computer monitor hight adjustment, printer paper feed and CPU box. As well as adding to the cost and providing more parts to break, this reduces the flexibility of the design when technology changes. As an example these units do not accommodate new flat screen, lap-top and laser printer equipment.
- Home furniture aesthetic: The units tend to be designed to look like a freestanding "armoire" or wall unit, with large doors to hide the office equipment. The bulk of the unit tends to dominate a small room. Also using fine furniture materials and construction techniques increases the cost of the unit.
- Too many things to close:Some home office units have have a half dozen or so slide-out, roll or fold up panels which need to each be moved to set up or close down the office. There may be several locks needed to secure the unit. Also work may need to be removed from the desktop to close the office. This makes it too cumbersome to use and results in the unit being left open all the time.
- Not secure: Many home office units have no locks or insubstantial locks design for domestic furniture.
Office in a box
To overcome these limitations the "fitted for but not with" approach of a military command and control center (Worthington 1999) can be used. A civilian equivalent is the LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities) project's recycling of shipping containers into mobile digital community centres for the developing world.
The home office can be conceived as a few simple cabinets made to blend into the wall of the apartment. There would be generous provision for cabling with large cableways and holes in shelves, but without cable fitted. Each box would have one large hinged door, with one lock. Inside would be equipped with a desk and shelves as required. Modular units design for wardrobes or similar could be used for flexible low cost internal fit-out. The boxes could be built of standard modular units stacked up to near ceiling height and then a custom size door used to provide a neat finish.The large bulk of the units would be disguised by giving them a similar finish to the wall of the apartment, placing them in a corner and with a shelving or entertainment unit alongside (or built into parts). In this way the bulk of the unit would be lessened by appearing to be the wall next to a built-in piece of furniture.
Sample design
A sample design is provided for a similar floor plan as an dxf file in AutoCAD format. Perspective drawings show the office open and closed. It should be emphasised these are quick sketches and do not take account of the location of power points, data, TV and telephone connections or the exact store required.
Office open
Office closed
