OFS know a thing or two about casegoods. Since pivoting from domestic to contract furniture in the early 80s, they’ve spent almost half a century shaping American workplaces. Early conversations around the future of the desk began nearly ten years ago. Even then, it was clear this most familiar of typologies was due a rethink. What we didn’t anticipate was quite how dramatically the ground beneath it would shift.

For centuries desks have defined how work is organised and performed. The Taylorist offices of the early 20th century marked the evolutionary launchpad for today’s systems: ordered, repeatable, optimised. Despite the technological and cultural shifts since, much of that logic remains embedded within desk planning. As a result, desking is often cast as a relic from a bygone age, one where work was static and the corner office meant everything. Yet the need for what is at its core an elevated surface, will remain long into the future. The workstation is not dead; it is still evolving.

The brief was intentionally open. It captured many of the tensions raised in earlier discussions, but left a central question unanswered: purpose? Before drawing began, first came research— site visits, workshops, interviews, debates — culminating in a broad critique of the future workplace that shaped the project moving forward.

Conducted before Covid and Ukraine, ChatGPT and Bombardiro Crocodilo, the research pointed to a recuring theme. A collection of shifts converging around a marked change in expectations. Flexibility, autonomy, ownership, culture. Less singular problems to solve, more changing conditions to design for. Covid accelerated trends already on the horizon, compressing years of change into months.

Desking has carried a bad reputation for some time. We all have an idea of what it is, but our relationships and definitions vary significantly. Over recent decades, systems have been shaped through the lens of efficiency — optimised for density and cost. Benching is perhaps the clearest manifestation of this.

Within the order and rigor of systems desking comes baggage, and a reputation for rigidity and complexity. Kaleid resists this. Our approach was not shaped by one set context or functional requirement, but instead a shift in principle. Kaleid was developed in the spirit of simplicity and investment, in the user, their empowerment and their potential.

Work is increasingly social. Not always collaborative in the traditional sense, but interconnected. People move between tasks, teams, and modes throughout the day. The workplace needs to reflect that fluidity.

Kaleid is designed around the idea of neighbourhoods. Smaller, more defined zones within the larger workplace—each shaped by the needs of its users. Not imposed from above, but formed from within. Open plan offices require clear definition of space/zoning, the architectural scale of Kaleid offers a reference point within the workplace, a tailored reflection of each team’s culture and requirements.

Kalied is not singular, but a collective family of products brought together to create an ecosystem. Organised into four core elements— Power, Surfaces, Privacy, and Storage — the system is designed around relationships rather than hierarchy. Like any successful recipe, the balance between ingredients matters as much as the ingredients themselves.

From the beginning, uncertainty was the only certainty. Reconfigurability became the primary driver of the project, with modularity embedded into every element.

Modern systems are typically offered in endless incremental variations, in contrast, Kaleid is built around just three modules. Tightening the lever of choice is not easy, almost a taboo, but our previous experience with Obeya proved the theory. What is lost in dimensional specificity is gained back through simplicity and adaptability.

Reduction is deceptively difficult. Every component must work harder and justify itself. But there is great clarity earned, modules present clear functional contexts and there is harmony between elements, facilitating frictionless reconfigurability. Less complexity means fewer barriers — financially, functionally, and environmentally.

Although many systems champion reconfigurability, this is often a surface level claim. Kaleid has the infrastructure for change built into the design, expressed through channels running across the system which accommodate what we describe as “pierceless reconfigurability” — components can be added, removed, or adjusted without compromising the structure itself.

This philosophy runs across the system. Take the a-frame infill panels, a simple clamp bracket accommodates endless change with no effect on any part of the system. Everything is designed as a platform with this behaviour in mind.

Alongside the systemisation of Kaleid, flexibility enveloped the aesthetic and functional dna of the system. Channelling a language of change and revision prompted a requirement for lightness, both physical and visual. A central function for desking is privacy and definition of space. Panel systems, and their lighter cousin the gallery panel, are ubiquitous solutions developed for this requirement. But both carry heavy anchors, with separation created through weighty barrier of upholstery and/or panel. Kaleid carves space through its light architectural framework, leveraging both vertical as well and horizontal planes.

When greater privacy is required, freestanding screens act as movable elements rather than fixed boundaries. Lightweight, adaptable, and nestable, they can be repositioned as requirements change.

Power is the heart of any workstation system. Without it, work simply stops. But it’s a complicated minefield and one of the greatest chokeholds on flexibility. We examined it industriously; studying existing approaches, interviewing stakeholders, and testing different strategies to uncover insights. Early hopes centred on identifying a system and methodology to design around, but the scale of choice and contextual nuance quickly rendered this impossible.

We turned our focus towards an open-source approach. Rather than designing for one system, can we design for every system— includes those not yet developed. This openness spreads beyond technical specification. Location, orientation, and access remain intentionally flexible. Power as an open-sourced platform, truly adaptable.

Across so much of this project answers were unclear, but the need for openness and flexibility was always present. Conscious of futureproofing unknown unknowns, open-sourced principles bled across the system. Ezel, Ramble, Riggs, all designed to work within the platform like bolt on plugins. Accessories follow the same rigour.

Desks are highly functional objects; they do not carry the same capacity for expression that a chair might. Beyond the many practical issues to resolve, we wanted to fundamentally rethink the atmospheric qualities surrounding desking. Traditional systems often feel cold and impersonal; this has long been overlooked. We focused on feeling. Creating a sense of comfort, intimacy and warmth was the goal, emotion to shape action. Materiality as the vehicle.

The palette intentionally draws from materials not typically associated with contemporary desking; naturally coded, soft across both physical and aesthetic attributes. This is best expressed with the use of solid timber— tactile, familiar, and quietly connected to both OFS’s heritage and the history of the desk itself. It was also chosen as the primary material reference for its aging qualities. Graceful and honest, marks and dents cary a different quality, history expressed like the patina of an old leather suite. This material signature/approach extends throughout the system, creating continuity across the family.

As well as redefining power functionally, we wanted to redefine it aesthetically. Typically expressed as rigid and technical, we flipped this on its head. Moulded PET covers the power, tactile to touch and warm on the eyes, it offers texture and softness across form and function. Mechanic becomes craft, heavy becomes light, hard becomes soft, Kaleid marks a material shift in expectations to something more human.

One of the biggest challenges facing the office today is the growth in hybrid working. Home offers comfort, convenience, and conditions for focused individual work. The office has to offer more; it must earn its employees.

Meaningful spaces are built through comfort and safety, community and connection. There are many anchors for community, but place and shared experiences are chief among them. Kaleid is designed around the unit of the team and the individual. No two are alike, every team has their specificities and each individual their own needs. Choice is the key to experience.

Like the high street within a town, Kaleid acts as a focal point around which activity gathers. Teams shape their environment through layout, privacy, mobility, and CMF. Ownership emerges through participation. When people feel connected to their environment, engagement tends to follow — not because it’s mandated, but because it feels personal.

Every project is the result of hundreds of decisions; sustainability sits within the balance of each one. For Kaleid, longevity became the guiding philosophy. If a product remains relevant, adaptable, and repairable — especially in a period of constant change — it avoids replacement and the associated environmental and financial costs.

Construction plays a central role in this thinking. The entire system is engineered for disassembly: components can be separated, replaced, repaired, and recycled appropriately at end of life. Materials were selected with equal care — aluminium for its recyclability, responsibly sourced timber for warmth and longevity, PET for its recycled content.

To ensure Kaleid can be refreshed and maintains aesthetic relevance, upholstered elements are designed with removable covers which can be replaced in situ — a feature that keeps the system in use for longer and reduces unnecessary waste.

Small decisions accumulate into meaningful change. Universal brackets, standardised dimensions, reduced hardware, flat-pack shipping, and majority local sourcing all contribute to reducing impact.

Sustainability is rarely defined by a single decision or gesture. More often, it emerges through accumulation — a continuous process of refinement, restraint, and long-term thinking embedded throughout a product.

Every project is built on the hard work and dedication of a big team of individuals, each person with their own expertise and role to play. It is their combined skill, passion, and belief that transform ideas into reality—and without them, nothing would be possible. This is especially the case for large projects like Kaleid, where commitment and faith must withstand years. Thank you to everyone we have the pleasure of working with on this project.