Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Residential Design, At Work
NeoCon showrooms this year were packed with home-style furniture for workplace use. Couches, armchairs, coffee tables, and more that would make any residential furniture vendor proud were displayed beside typical office chairs and work surfaces. This increase in the use of residential-esque furniture at work makes sense. Much of the residential furniture on view features plenty of curved lines and surfaces, more than the most usual workplace options, even the typical offerings for break areas. We associate straight lines and sharp angles with efficiency and curves with comfort, according to rigorous scientific studies, so relatively more curve-intense furniture is a natural for some workplace areas. No environment or anything else is ever entirely rectilinear or curvilinear, both extremes would seem odd, so what’s in play here are the relative number of curved and straight lines. And we’re not just talking curved/straight forms in furniture here – the same mental apparatus …
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