browse by topics
Standing desks have a long and illustrious history: polymath Leonardo da Vinci was rumoured to have used them in the 15th century, followed by the likes of Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. Early proponents commissioned high desks directly from carpenters, or used the taller shelves of bookcases, until manually adjustable sit-stand desks were invented that used hand cranks, pins, screws, or gas cylinders that compress and expand. UniFor’s latest workstation, however, the Spring System designed by architect Antonio Citterio, uses springs to counteract the weight of the desk as it rises.
With their potential for increased productivity and creativity, as well as mounting research around potential health benefits, standing desks have often formed part of designers’ visions of the ideal workplace. When UniFor began its journey in 1969, furnishing the offices of the future was its raison d’être. The company released one of its first height-adjustable desks in 1986, which now exists in its modern form as the iSattelliti S200 workstation. When electronic desks that can rise vertically at the push of a button first became popularised in the 1980s, UniFor released Richard Sapper’s Secrétaire (1989), which was a play on the elaborate 18th-century writing desks that featured drawers, cabinets and cubby holes. Sapper’s cabinet took the typology into the future with a height-adjustable flip-down worktop and convenient wheels to roll the workstation around. But the design retained the classic secrétaire’s nostalgic aesthetic, with various storage spaces where stationery, files, and even a fax machine could be neatly tucked inside. The cabinet’s warm wood and elegant rounded edges bridged the aesthetics of the home and the office, foreshadowing the way in which these realms would increasingly merge.
The new Spring System by Antonio Citterio is a further step forwards in the manner in which it breaks away from the use of electronic height-adjustable technology.
Spring System
Spring System
“During the meeting with Carlo Molteni, they showed me the kinematics they had developed, and I immediately saw its potential.”
Citterio says.
The new Spring System uses springs to counteract the weight of the desk as it rises. Users simply have to pull a lever underneath the desk to adjust its height, making it easy and intuitive to interact with, and removing the need for additional cables. “I asked if it could be integrated into a central column and sketched out an idea,” Citterio says. While most modern standing desks feature thick legs with long, rectangular feet that span the width of the desk, Citterio’s system has slender, angled legs like a praying mantis. This is because the kinematics are all embedded in a horizontal beam at the centre of the desk, rather than inside the legs themselves.
Citterio is known for his timeless, elegant aesthetic and use of high quality materials, making him the perfect design partner for UniFor. In the single desk version, the structural element is anchored beneath raised flooring, nodding towards Citterio’s architectural background by smoothly embedding the furniture within a building. The system also offers reconfigurable meeting tables, and each of its components has been developed for easy assembly at the end of its lifecycle, allowing for responsible disposal and efficient material recovery.
“This experience confirmed once again the value of a design dialogue – based on experimentation and direct exchange between design and engineering, an aspect I have always considered fundamental to my way of working”
Citterio says.
This dialogue between different fields is also essential to the history of the standing desk. Interest in standing desks rose sharply in the 2000s, when James Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, coined the infamous phrase “sitting is the new smoking,” and, in 2015, the Danish government even passed a law requiring employers to offer height-adjustable desks to protect workers’ health. The idea that a sedentary life can be dangerous has been around since at least 1797, however, when Presbyterian minister Jon Orton first recommended standing desks to avoid potential injury. While studies have linked an inactive lifestyle with chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes, Dylan Thompson, a professor of human physiology at Bath University, provided more nuance on the matter.
“The damage caused by smoking can’t be offset,” he told The Guardian in 2021. “But a moderate level of physical activity can offset high levels of sitting.”
Height-adjustable workstations such as the Spring System which prioritise flexibility and comfort will continue to play a vital role of the future of work.
When Monk re-enters Molteni&C’s catalogue this year, it will mark 35 years since the chair was last in production. “Designed by Afra and Tobia Scarpa, ‘Monk’ is simple and solid,” reads the company’s 1990 catalogue.
The catalogue for UniArm, the new monitor arm from UniFor, opens with a few pages of closeup photography of the arm’s sleek, hinged form, followed by a double-page spread filled with an X-ray image of the product.
Discover the history of Villa Planchart in Caracas, Venezuela, as we celebrate the Compasso d’Oro Career Award for Products for Gio Ponti’s D.154.2 armchair.
