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 that don’t yet exist? This openness spreads beyond technical specification. Location, orientation, and access remain intentionally flexible. Power as an open-sourced platform, truly adaptable.

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.

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.

Every project is the result of hundreds of decisions; sustainability sits within the balance of each one. For Kaleid, longevity became a 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.