Space-Saving Desk Designs

The bedroom allows for a tiny niche for a built-in wood desk. The target painting is by Alia Penner.

A silo ladder in the study leads to the roof deck. Both desk lamps are Tizios by Richard Sapper for Artemide; the pendant is a Zettle’z by Ingo Maurer; and the Kalos armchair and Solo desk chair are by Antonio Citterio for B&B Italia.

Architect Bruce Bolander made the most of a limited footprint in a house he designed in a Malibu canyon. With the small bedroom unable to accommodate any "normal" size desk, the architect designed a very thin custom steel desk where resident Heidi Wright works. The floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors from Metal Window Corporation open the entire corner of the room up to the outdoors. “The mountains across the way are almost like another wall—they contain the space to the point that you feel like you’re in a much bigger space, that you’re part of the overall landscape,” says Bolander. Photo by J Bennett Fitts.

Lit by the skylight and an Artemide ceiling lamp, Schenk and Ngai consult laptops on mid-century Heywood Wakefield desks, which Fernandez salvaged from a Harvard junkyard and then restored.

When rolled across the apartment, the table serves as an extension of the concrete desk, partially tucking underneath to extend the work surface and create an interplay of materials. “Each part must serve multiple functions,” says Chan.

Tucked into one end of the house, a desk by Florence Knoll displays Stacey’s mid-century pottery.

Bovee uses the small desk at the foot of the couple's bed for freelance writing projects.

The workstation, open. “This was our solution to providing Karen with a place to work at home,” says Sundstrom. “She used to work in the bedroom, but we cut the room down considerably, and we thought it would be best to keep the bedroom as a place to relax.”

In the living room, a sizable table disappears into vertical space to make room for parties or playtime with the kids.