Margaret Rhodes

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The standing desk, a truly bad idea, is not likely to be the furniture of tomorrow’s office. The Dutch firm, RAAAF, has come up with an alternative proposal that’s even battier. It’s ergonomics run amok. From “The Weirdest Proposal Yet for the ‘Office of the Future,'” a Wired piece by Margaret Rhodes:

“The designers are especially interested in supported standing, which standing desks don’t offer. Supported standing, like upright leaning, can engage the muscles—hopefully enough to prevent the drop in fat-burning enzymes that occurs during long periods of sitting—without tiring out the employee’s legs and lower back quite so much. The maze-like series of angled and tapered frames create an infinite number of leaning spots, for workers of any height. There are no fixed desks, so employees might find it natural to roam around and be active.

That feature is also one of the obvious impracticalities of ‘The End of Sitting.’ Without desks, how do staffers keep track of supplies, notes, or work documents? Without offices or conference rooms, how can people have meetings that don’t disrupt everyone else’s concentration? ‘The End of Sitting’ is both an art installation and an experiment, so it’s not actually concerned with answering those questions. Instead, Rietveld says this is “about showing a different way of thinking.'”

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“Sitting kills”:

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