Mobile Box Office: Hideaway Work Station
This working all-in-one furniture piece may not win any design awards on its aesthetic merit (or for its ergonomics), but does provide an extremely compact solution for saving office space – cabinets, drawers, chair and desk are all rolled into one relatively slim metal box (and float on rollers, no less).
At less than two feet wide and just a few feet deep, the robust exterior shell can be slid on its wheels into a closet, corner or other out-of-the-way storage area when not in use – again: it is not exactly stunning, but at least achieves a functional and discrete minimalism that lets you get the job done and pack the whole workspace system away for another day.
The chair slots neatly into a void beneath the desk surface, next to drawers and below shelves on either side when this ‘Box Office’ is closed, making maximum space for shelving and internal storage in addition to working/sitting needs. At around two thousand dollars, it is perhaps not the cheapest solution – but might still be cheaper than adding a whole new office room to your home.
It looks like this mobile home office is no longer available for sale, which is a shame, but there are similar fold away offices out there. Another fold-out office design by Planet 3 Studios, for instance, takes a similar approach as an all-in-one piece of transforming furniture that just looks like a strange box when it’s not in use, and can be tucked back agains a wall.
Other strategies conceal messy offices under fold-down beds after dark, keeping all of your clutter right where you left it until you’re ready to put the bed away for the day.
If you’re crafty, you might even be able to take this idea and run with it, creating a room-in-a-box type solution that contains your desk, storage and other elements you need for your workday, but closes up when not in use.
