Lying On Your Back The Better To Think On Your Feet ?
The surprising truth is a great many people think better on their back than they do on their feet. After all a supine spine is totally unstressed, no energy need be expended normally required to support vertebra, scapula, humerus, and cranium - leaving one's powers of concentration free to focus exclusively on the problem at hand. Especially when it comes to creative work, where pursuing alternative trains of thought is not only advisable but often essential, thinking horizontally might just be the key to giving yourself an edge. Science apparently confirms this intuition explaining that the relaxed mind produces a smooth and steady train of so called alpha waves, neural activity which closely correlates with the mind generating creative insight. What all this means is that in the case of the creative and entrepreneurial minded person, much more is likely to be gained from zim when zie is relaxed and reclining than when zie is stressed and / or 'desked'. Conventional wisdom says that while you should always meet people on your feet, its best to negotiate sitting down. Does it perhaps not follow that as you are preparing for seated negotiation, such preparations are enhanced and intensified in a state of repose, when one is comfortably and attentively reclining ? Stretched out and kicked back you are in your peak state to plot and plan for contingencies which might arise in the thick of tense negotiations. Now forgive me for rambling on like this but we have at least now arrived at the point:
Is not what the 'pop up', 'drop in' workspace environment needs just such alpha wave enhancing 'platforms' I have taken the liberty of branding as the drop-in tune-up daybed ? VRT has put its mind to design a prototype for such drop-in daybed suited to the typically high ceiling storefront common along the large metropolitan street. The VRT plan proposes quadruple stacked bunk beds, in plan two units wide by two deep.
Other companies have proposed the individual reclining workstation. Altwork for example offers something similar to a reclining dentist's chair in which you can work from a seated or reclining position. However given that the drop in workspace already has tables and chairs why not simply provide reclining workstations in the form of a daybed ? As well, the stacked daybed strategy multiplies the revenue per square foot and is far cozier besides.
The floor level platforms are accessed by walking under and to the back of the rack while the upper bunks are reached by a set of stairs leading to the successively higher levels. In my presentation drawings the the bunk racks are faced with overstuffed Chesterfield style arm chairs and sofas serving as a kind of buffer / transition zone from the conventional worksites comprised of tables and chairs.
Finally let me say a word about the financial angle. In the table below I take a stab at financial analysis using some simple arithmetic to serve as a hypothetical 'pro forma' - one which may or may not have much validity. For comparison I include a link to an article about retail revenue generation per sq foot which you can view here. Not surprisingly Tiffany's is at the top while somewhat surprisingly (at least to me), Lululemon is right below. The pro forma drop-in daybed revenue per sq ft compares favorably with these benchmarks, a most pleasant surprise. In the table below for the sake of brevity I refer to the drop-in day bed as a 'crib'.
Hypothetical Revenue Analysis
End
