Offices are changing, but desks are here to stay by Christoph Messing If you ask ten people of different ages what they believe belongs in an office, most of them will probably answer: a desk. It is actually surprising that many futurologists consider the desk to be a „dying species“. For them, the future work scene looks quite different: lounging on a sofa, chatting with colleagues in a ski lift chair placed in the middle of a meeting room and brainstorming new creative ideas during a walk through the Zen Garden that has been planted next to the company building. Brave new world. Who would not want to work this way? But let me tell you something: I am writing this text on a laptop at a desk in my office. Very old Today you can literally work from anywhere - also from the garden. school. And I am going to boldly state at this point that as long as people have something to write, they will still be working from their desk many years from now. Writing from the sofa only works for me in exceptio- nal cases. Even if the office workers of tomor- row do sit in their ski lift chair, or re- gularly visit the Zen Garden, at some point during their working day they will return to a desk, at least temporarily. But they may also choose to stand at their desk to work. And with that said, after this admittedly somewhat provocative introduction, I have come to my point: The desk has evolved over time, as has the way we use it. Not only has desk design changed, but so has its features. Thanks to technical innovations, it has been adapted to the way we work. In the animal kingdom, we would say that this adaptability has and will ensure its survival. The way we work has changed rapidly in recent years. Fixed structures have long since dissolved and will con- tinue to do so. We also work remotely from home, on the train or in the garden. We spend more time in 1
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