This Awesome Office of the Future Replaces Chairs and Desks With Inclines and Flat Surfaces

Designers say that standing while working could improve your health and make you think better.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Back in July, we saw really cool design plans for an office of the future by Netherlands-based architecture firm RAAAF and artist Barbara Visser that was unlike any space we had ever seen. Doing away with chairs and desks, the renderings showed a space with a continuous rock-like structure throughout. The structure featured numerous angles and crevices where office workers would stand, lean, or sit with one another instead of isolating themselves in cubicles for hours. "This is a first step towards a future in which standing at work is the new norm," RAAAF said of the design. "A lifelong health where we are both physically and mentally active."

The designers have since built a prototype of the office in a space in Amsterdam, and according to Fast Company, they are working with researchers from the University of Groningen to "test the room's advantages."

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The results won't be shared until next Spring, but Ronald Rietveld of RAAAF told Fast Company, "What seems to be a result is that after a day of working, people are more active in their head, but more tired in their body. And that's actually what it's all about—the main goal is to actually put more pressure on your legs during the day, and take different positions. That's what sitting is not doing."

For RAAAF, the installation is what Rietveld calls a "thinking model" and not an actual model that they want to see in production. "We are not actually focusing on rocks taking over the world or something...We try to work on the border of architecture, art, and science, to come up with new ways of thinking rather than solving all of the world's problems. It's really focusing you to think in a different way."

Having people adjust to standing while they work is not something that will catch on overnight, but the designers have quoted medical research that shows that it would be much better for our health. For more information about the project, head over to the RAAAF website.

[via Fast Co Exist]

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