Okay, Internets. Please help me out here. I’m trying to plan out our office space. Here is how people who use Illustrator do space planning: By measuring everything precisely, and recreating it in Illustrator. It causes less back pain, but also burns fewer calories.
Here are some things to keep in mind as you’re helping me out:
–The “inset” door goes into the building. The other door goes outside. The long rectangle on the left is the window.
–Sometimes the fridge and Mike’s drawers aren’t marked. The fridge is the small square. The drawers are the small rectangle.
–The chair is never marked. It’s the trapezoid with a line at the back.
–The “counter” is made up of two folding tables that can get up to counter height. When we’re completely settled, I’ll be getting a large sheet of plywood cut to the exact dimensions of the counter top. That will create a large work space for Mike and I to work on. Things to consider: I would rather them be side-to-side than end-to-end because this creates an enormous space that we can use that would never be available to us anywhere else. It means that no paper will be too large, no fabric will be too large… basically, it’s ideal. But for this to work, 3 of the 4 sides MUST be free. The other option is to do end-to-end, which makes a very LONG counter, but we may encounter problems where we have paper or fabric that is larger than the depth of our work surface.
Options 1 and 2:
Okay. These are pretty much mirror image. For some reason, the image on the right looks better to me than the image on the left. (But right now, the only way I can get internet is by having my desk right where it is in the left image… this may change when I stop stealing internet and pay for my own.)
Options 3 and 4:
I don’t think I’m liking option 3… In option 4, I do like how the counter top is what you see first when you come in the office… it almost creates a reception counter? Or not?
Options 5 and 6:
My favorite space by far is 6 (above, right). I would bring another matching chair from home, and buy a low circle coffee table. This creates a nice space to meet with clients. (Which would probably happen rarely.) The “counter” is able to span the entire width of the room (in fact, it’s so snug that it’s bordering on TOO snug), which I think is really cool, except for the problem mentioned above that this doesn’t necessarily create the best work counter since we might work on projects that are deeper than the depth of the counter. However, those situations would probably be as rare as meeting with clients. And I suppose we could always just move the chairs and table and work on the floor in such a situation…
THOUGHTS?? What rules am I breaking here? Am I being bad at flow or balance or whatever?
were you planning on attaching the wood on top permanently?
if not, you could have a piece of wood cut to both the square and rectangular configuration. this would allow you to use option #6 and adjust it when projects come through that require you to work on the square configuration of the table.
if you were planning on attaching the wood permanently, you could consider a heavier wood so the weight would be substantial enough to give you the feel of being attached but still flexible to adjust the configuration when needed.
it wouldn't be ideal to rearrange as needed, but sounds more comfortable than working on the floor and it sounds like you wouldn't have to do that very often.
i think option six gives you the best flow, so i agree to it being a favorite as well. if you want to keep the square configuration, i would go with option four.
6… or 2
Thanks for the comments! I think we ARE going to go with 6! So we bought our bookshelves at IKEA this weekend, and we bought the material for the counter. I'm pretty excited to start getting everything put together! Anonymous, I appreciate you pointing out that we can get two counter tops cut. Smart!!