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How to Create an Ergonomic Workspace: A Practical Guide for Your Office

In today’s increasingly remote and technology-driven work environment, having an ergonomic workspace is essential not only for maintaining productivity but also for ensuring long-term physical health. A well-designed workspace can prevent musculoskeletal pain, enhance concentration, and reduce absenteeism. Here’s a comprehensive guide to setting up a workstation that optimizes comfort and efficiency while adhering to ergonomic principles.

1. The Desk: The Heart of Your Workspace Choosing the right desk is fundamental. A height-adjustable desk is ideal because it allows you to alternate between sitting and standing positions, promoting dynamic posture. Experts recommend a height between 70 and 76 cm, but sit-stand desks are gaining popularity for their ability to adapt to different physical needs throughout the workday. Additionally, your desk should offer enough space to accommodate not only the monitor but also all other necessary tools without creating clutter.

2. The Ergonomic Chair: An Investment in Health The chair is one of the most crucial elements in creating an ergonomic workspace. A good ergonomic chair should offer adjustable lumbar support, backrest tilt, and seat height customization. Adjusting these features allows the chair to be tailored to your body, preventing back problems and promoting correct posture. Don’t forget that the quality of materials and the durability of the chair are equally important to ensure maximum comfort over time.

3. The Monitor: Positioning for Reduced Eye Strain Proper monitor placement is essential for reducing eye strain and preventing neck and shoulder pain. The monitor should be positioned about 50-70 cm from your eyes, with the top edge of the screen at or slightly below eye level. Adjustable monitor stands can help achieve the ideal angle, adapting the screen to your height and workstation setup.

4. Organizing Your Workspace: Efficiency and Order A well-organized workspace is key to maintaining productivity and reducing stress. Everything you need throughout the day should be easily accessible, while clutter should be minimized. Use accessories like drawers, shelves, and containers to keep everything in order and optimize space.

5. Lighting: Combining Natural and Artificial Light for Well-being Lighting is another critical factor in creating an ergonomic workspace. Ideally, you should have a combination of natural and artificial light. Natural light helps maintain circadian rhythms, while artificial lighting should be adjustable and glare-free to reduce eye strain.

6. Ergonomic Accessories: Extra Support Consider using ergonomic accessories such as footrests, wrist supports, and ergonomic mice. These tools help maintain proper posture and reduce strain on specific body parts during prolonged computer use.

By following these guidelines, you can create a workspace that not only enhances your health and well-being but also boosts your daily efficiency and creativity. Ergonomics is an investment that pays off over time, ensuring a healthier and more productive work environment.

Collective office or individual one, which would you prefer?

With the new information technologies, the diffusion of PCs, tablets and smartphones, the way we work has changed. Formerly, the office was used to call, write with a typewriter, consult bulky paper files. There were also meeting rooms for casual meetings.

With the digitization of information, paper files are fewer and smaller, not much space is needed to store and view them. Not only offices, but also office furniture is changing.

That’s why at least half of the new offices are collective and open. However, each type of office, collective or individual, has its advantages and disadvantages. Try to consider:

open collective officebenefits of open offices:

  • cheaper because they save space and energy for heating
  • they allow to find colleagues more easily
  • they facilitate exchange and collaboration
  • they facilitate transparency

disadvantages of open offices:

  • sometimes there can be too much noise
  • we can disturb or be disturbed when we talk on the phone or dictate with speech recognition

benefits of individual offices:

  • quieter, they facilitate concentration
  • we can talk on the phone quietly without disturbing anyone or being heard.

disadvantages of individual offices:

they do not have all the advantages of collective offices

And you, which office would you prefer?

Hollande and the French triple executive chair

The press all over the world is talking about the supposed affair of the French President, Mr. Hollande, with the actress Julie Gayet . It is not for us to comment on the case here; it remains that this could bring significant changes in the management and direction of the French State.

Indeed, if the French president hosts a first lady in the presidential palace, while also having a mistress, to the expenses that French taxpayers will have to bear because of the bigamy should be added the expenses for an office furniture that suits the presidential triplet. For if bigamy is customary at the top of the state, presidential offices should adopt a suitable chair, for example when the presidential triplet hosts presidential couples, from countries  less developed than France, which are attached to this cheesy institution that is marriage or couple.

That’s why we, together with our Italian chairs, we  propose an example of executive French chair, triple, for the president, the first lady and the first lady of France. Noblesse oblige!

triple Italian chair

Multifunctional office furniture : more and more fashionable

desk-bed

Mira Schroeder desk bed

Mira Schröder desk bed

 

cooler-table

cooler-table

Lack of space, but also an economic crisis that demands frugality and functionality make multifunctional office furniture the trendiest of all. On the right here, a barrel has been transformed into a bar table with cooler.

Above, a desk which is soon a bed.

multifonctional sink

multifonctional sink

Here on the right it is not a office furniture, but the idea is great and convenient. If you’ve ever struggled to fill-up a basin in a narrow a sink, you will immediately understand what I mean.

stairs bookshelf

stairs bookshelf

stairs with bar

stairs with bar

 

 

On the left, a staircase cabinet bar, and right, a staircase library.

Finally, here at the bottom, a beautiful small dining table which quickly turns into a table PC.

PC-Table

PC-Table

Italy’s Giugiaro named car designer of the century

Here is a slideshow of some cars designed by Giugiaro :

[nivo source=”current-post” ]

The shelves of Giugiaro’s house are put to the test: keep the rain off awards for Giorgetto who, in Rome at the “Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”, has won the ” Premio (award) Antonio Feltrinelli ” and an infinite number of honorific degrees, the title of ” Designer of the Century ” and more.

Giugiaro is distinguished by a design not only original, but capable of huge success with hundreds of millions of consumers. When Volkswagen was at the brink of bankruptcy in the late 70s, he had to completely replace its flagship model, the beetle, breathless after 30 years of sales Giugiaro drew for the German manufacturer the Golf, which quickly became a worldwide success. Giugiaro succeeded the same feat 12 years later straightening the fate of Fiat with the success of its Punto.
“Quantification of quality” in the reproduction of things that can improve people’s lives. Here, this component can be applied in many ways, but Giugiaro is the designer who did it better because its constant search for what is practical and utilitarian – when he draws something – became legendary.”

Said Giugiaro at the award ceremony: “The thing I like most about the motivation of the price is linked to the characteristics of the project costs: when I design a car that I never start with the emotion. And ” this is exactly the opposite: I start from economic rationalit. And then it comes to functionality. If in my way this conclusion is not reached, then it doesn’t give the economic fruits and you can not talk about something beautiful, let alone something usefu .

“But what is beauty? Is it possible to define it? What are the real secrets of something that appeals beyond the technique?” Beauty – explains Giugiaro – is a mathematical factor. In a face, it is all a matter of distance between the eyes, the length of the nose; beauty is pure mathematics, proportions are paramount. Look at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome: the colonnade, the windows … everything is a matter of proportions.”

Italian design furniture taps the web for sales and innovation

office chair

Until 2011 online sales in the sector of Italian design furniture were worth less than 1% of all purchases over the Internet, but last year the incidence has doubled. And for the Politecnico di Milano  in recent months  the sites that offer home decor products and office furniture have multiplied.

Without a doubt, the web is less expensive. It’s promising for Made in Italy office and home furniture: a channel with which to reach new customers and new markets. The only viable if you do not have budget to spend between millionaires fairs and marketing. In recent months, manufacturers and designers seem to understand, as revealed by the data on e- commerce at the Milan Polytechnic. “In recent months we have multiplied the sites that offer home decor products,” says Valentina Pontiggia, a researcher at the Centre and the Polytechnic University of Milan – commerce.

The most popular model is that of flash sales. Limited offers, at a significant discount on stock that big brands want to dispose of. Dalani ( www.dalani.it ), a community of online shopping, is accessed by invitation only Open to all instead Lovethesign ( www.lovethesign.com ), a site which from November until now scored a million hits. ” We are leaders in Italy for variety of catalog : over 5 thousand products of 200 companies,” says the 32 year-old Simone Panfilo, co-founder. Known brands such as Foscarini lamps and creations of artisans, as the tables of the woodwork Venetian Bortolato : the furnishings are offered in time with discounts up to 60%, or at list price in the catalog permanently. ” We treat the selection, only one in ten of those which we examine is involved,” he continues. ” We want to be, for quality, the next step to Ikea.” A startup that convinces the lenders: Lovethesign has just raised one million euro from United Ventures, which it uses to launch abroad.

The Internet as a sales channel, then. Others, however, are betting that the web can revolutionize the entire production process, for example by a dialogue between young designers and craftsmen. Formabilio ( www.formabilio.com ) is an idea of Maria Grazia Andali, 36, and her husband, Andrea Carbone, 37: ” A real company, with its own brand,” she explained. Notably, though : the projects are collected through themed competitions online and voted on by the creative community. The production, then, is carried out by small craft.  At the moment, there are four supply agreements, 67 thousand designers enrolled in the community, mostly young talents : the one who wins a contest is paid 7% of the selling price. That happens only online : “After the summer we get to about 40 furniture, with a tab on the designer and manufacturer Company.” And in September 2013 will start the activity of SlowD ( landing.slowd.it ), a startup that will offer  ” zero kilometer ” furniture. A widespread factory : the designers designs, the user buys online, the order is assigned to the artisan closest to him.

Attempts to enhance the heritage crafts typical of Made in Italy. A value that the Internet is likely to conceal, but also allows you to communicate in innovative ways. Just look at the videos made in the workshops by creative Italian company ( www.segnoitaliano.it ), which reactivates brand and sells Italian excellence in danger of extinction. From copper to Trentino lightweight chair of Chiavari, “A Slow Food design “, summarizes the Milanese architect Alberto Nespoli, one of the founders. “Let us forget productions and with the help of craftsmen update.” The products are all customizable, the target high, the turnover 90 million Euros. On the site you will discover the stories of objects, which can be ordered directly through the portal or at the store. “The process of purchase is now multi-purpose, explains Mr. Pontiggia – the integration between online and offline leads to new sales strategies.”

“For us it is a tool able to connect new customers and internationally,” says Diego Paccagnella, 36, creator of Design- Apart ( design – apart.com ), living showroom of Made in Italy furniture, which will open in September in Manhattan. Living, because Paccagnella will dwell there for a year with his wife and son, presenting the furniture in a daily context. ” “Online you can buy items of the collections base, but the one on which we focus are the custom-made furniture, to be developed together with the customer. The site will help create the community, valuing our history and that of the company.”

Some  younger and innovative manufacturers also try to tap the web on their own. Filippo Berto, 36, is the owner of the company Brianzola Sofas. It’s online since 1999, then came the blog, Facebook page and e-commerce, ” Worth 20 % of sales, about € 4 million per year,” he says. ” But the web has helped us above all to communicate our story and our territory, building a deeper relationship with our customers.” To which the whole company had to adjust, ” On the net you promise transparency,” he concludes. ” Then you can not back out, you need to fulfill your promises.”

 

Katharine Hepburn’s video interview : acting is like buying furniture

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn was surely among the four or five most prestigious and famous actresses of the last century. In an interview during a popular American show, the Dick Cavett Show,  Dick Cavett, TV reporter, asked her if she did not regret acting in a film without being paid properly. She answered that the satisfaction of having done a work that remains is such, that financial compensation is secondary. Katharine Hepburn added: “It’s like buying a beautiful piece of furniture, when I look at it, my pleasure is such that I never think about the money spent.”

As Dick Cavett replies, that he often hesitates to buy furniture because of the price, the actress does not hesitate to qualify its attitude as “stupid”.

Buying furniture compared to acrtng, it’s new and really quite flattering for us office furniture professionals …

Sustainable Office Furniture

When most people think of going green at the office, they usually think of recycling paper and using organic cleaners for disinfecting surface areas and cleaning windows. But, the office furniture you use, including the chair you sit in each day, may contain carcinogenic chemicals which can pollute our soil when the furniture is discarded.

Recycling Old Office Furniture

If you’re in the market for some new, sustainable office furniture, but your old furniture still has some use left in it, you should recycle the old furniture rather than taking it to a land fill. How do you recycle your old furniture? By allowing someone else to have it, either by selling it to them or giving it away. This empties your office of old furniture, keeps it out of the land fill, and allows someone else to get a deal on the office furniture they need.

What To Look For In Sustainable Office Furniture

When you begin shopping for your new furniture, you may feel that the price is your first concern. While you must consider your budget, it should not be your only determining factor and in fact, it should be low on your list of priorities.

The first thing you should look for in sustainable office furniture is functionality. You want furniture that will serve you well for many years. If yours is a small operation, consider that your business will grow. You need furniture that will grow with you. This may mean purchasing a desk or file cabinet with some extra drawers to allow for expansion.

You should also look at the features of the furniture which allow it to be functional or non-functional for your particular purpose. Is there a place on the desk for a computer keyboard? Are there shelves for books and other materials?

After functionality and features, your next consideration should be comfort. This especially applies to your chair. You will spend many hours in that chair at that desk, so you want to be sure that you will have ample back support. Also, your desk should not be too low. You should be able to fit your legs under it comfortably and stretch them out.

Finally, you will want to check the certification of the furniture and the materials used in the manufacturing process. Make sure the manufacturer stands behind their products and offers a guarantee on quality and materials used.