Designing desks for every species
A behind-the-scenes look at the furniture experiments that made COWorking work for bodies from four kilograms to six hundred.
“Pet-friendly” usually means a water bowl and a tolerance policy. We wanted the stronger claim: a space that’s actually designed for mixed-species work. That meant rethinking the most basic unit of coworking — the desk.
Iteration one: the universal desk (failed)
Our first attempt was a single adjustable desk meant to serve everyone from a chihuahua’s human to Bessie. The result adjusted slowly, wobbled at full height, and satisfied no one. Lesson: universal design isn’t one object for all bodies; it’s a system with the right options.
Iteration two: the desk system (shipped)
The floor now mixes four formats:
- Classic sit-stand desks for humans, in pods of four so a dog bed fits in the pod’s corner without becoming a trip hazard.
- Perch desks — chest-height, no chair — that double as cow-adjacent workstations. The feed rail underneath was Marta’s idea and we pretend we thought of it.
- Low tables in the quiet room, where cats have unionized.
- The rubber-matted standing bays in the Pasture Annex, with power drops from the ceiling so there’s not a single cable at hoof level.
The detail nobody notices (which means it works)
Every walkway on the floor is 1.4 meters wide. That’s wheelchair-generous for humans and, not coincidentally, exactly the width at which a cow can turn around without redesigning the furniture for you. Accessibility and cow-proofing turn out to be the same discipline: design for the largest, least predictable body, and everyone else gets room to breathe.
Curious how it feels in person? The full floor is on every tour, and the Spaces page has the details.