Maybe it’s the next logical step after standing desks: the nap desk.
If standing is good for us, so is a mid-day snooze. Science says that a nap makes us less likely to make mistakes, more alert, better able to handle frustrating tasks, and improves memory. It may even make us more creative. Still, only a tiny fraction of offices actually have nap rooms.
So one designer proposed a different solution. Athanasia Leivaditou’s desk comes with its own built-in nap room underneath. You slide the top of the desk over for a little extra head room, flip the back down to turn it into a mattress, and lean back the side to support a pillow. And then you climb in and shut your eyes.
“The main concept came after I saw my classmates put chairs together in order to have a power nap while they were struggling between deadlines,” Leivaditou wrote in an email. “Then I wanted to comment on the fact that many times our lives are ‘shrinking’ in order to fit into the confined space of our office.”
“I understand that being comfortable enough to sleep at work (even for a few minutes) means that someone must go against strong stereotypes,” she says. Still, she thinks more companies should start to embrace the power nap. And the desk would also pose obvious advantages for anyone who has to work all night to meet a deadline.
“There are cases–for example businesses that you have to be there for a lot of hours– where this desk just attempts to ‘replace’ in a very basic level the environment of our homes,” she says.
Sadly–though other nap pods exist on the market–the nap desk is just a concept. “We mostly design things in order to demonstrate concepts and express potential needs,” says Leivaditou.