There Is Something Unusual about This Office: Every Day at 6 p.m. It… Disappears!

Does your boss regularly ask you to work extra hours? Are you tired of sitting in the office till late? Then you would definitely love to work in this design studio based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. During the day it looks like an ordinary office, but at 6 p.m. something incredible happens: all desks suddenly lift up into the air and the whole workplace literally disappears!

The secret is simple: there is a wire-rope system that lifts up the desks with computers on them and conceals them in a ceiling compartment. A similar mechanism is used at theaters to lift heavy equipment up and down. Thus, with the help of this system, it is possible to clear the whole floor in a couple of minutes with a simple key turn.

There is another significant advantage along with keeping the work schedule adequate – the same room can be used for different purposes in different hours of the day.

“We are able to pull the tables up into the ceiling and make the whole room into a dance floor, yoga studio, trend session, networking reception, or anything else you can think of–the floor is literally yours,” says Sander Veenendaal, creative director at Amsterdam design studio Heldergroen.

Since the company uses the office only during the daytime, on the evenings and weekends the space is left to others for free. “We believe that if you give something, in this case a room to do anything you like, you will eventually get something back,” says Veenendaal.

The “disappearing” desks also contribute to the security of the office: an empty room is very unlikely to attract the interest of potential thieves.

At the same time, the office is highly sustainable, and all furniture is made from recycled materials found in the neighborhood, such as old telephone poles and car doors. The building itself is an abandoned 100-year-old chocolate factory which was converted into an office.

Imagine if all the companies followed the same strategy and occupied space for offices only during business hours. Such reasonable use of existing space would help reduce environmental costs of economic activity as there would not be so much need for new construction in cities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ImlqB1abiQ

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anna LeMind is the owner and lead editor of the website Learning-mind.com, and a staff writer for The Mind Unleashed.

Featured images: Heldergroen