Designer Pages , the new source for searching products in Architecture and Design, commissioned TMRnyc to design and build three SideWired tables for their booth at the NEOCON 2009 expo in Chicago. One being 10′ long. More pictures to follow. Their booth included a giant 12′ media wall that was running a Twitter app featuring all of the Tweets during the show. Farrokh at Farrodyne provided the water jet cutting and installation for us in Chicago. Actually, Farrodyne saved our collective butts after one unmentionable glass company in Chicago dropped the ball at the last minute. They couldn’t understand why I was upset for some reason and then went into this whole “You’re from New York and you have a bad NY attitude”  Is there some weird New York/Chicago beef I am missing? Fill me in.

“At this past Bklyn Designs, there was always a large crowd or a news crew investigating Scott Behr’s SideWired table. The concept behind the piece is important to anyone who lives in the Wired Age: organize and hide the wires of electrical devices by plugging them into the table. Finally, no more mess, no more tripping over wires, and no more knocking laptops onto floors.”

The SideWired Desk concept came out of a desire to organize all the visual madness of cords, wall warts, and power bricks sprouting out of my laptop, monitors, hard drives and speakers, spilling on to the floor into an ugly tangle of a powerstrip, cat hair and cables.  We are constantly needing to plug in a camera or cellphone for a charge. The frustration of searching for a free power outlet to plug into nearby made me ask, “Why can’t I just plug this into my desk?  Why can’t I just plug my desk into the wall with one cord and neatly plug in all of my other gear into the desk.” The design challenge was to make a great looking desk, incorporate a hidden cable management system and power source as well as making it fast and easy to get at the cable ends to rearrange things as the situation arises. One of the solutions was to make the wire grommets a part of the design. The other solution was to make a hinged tray to manage the cables that can also hold hard drives and any other corded object that clutters the desktop. Hell Yeah.

After an extensive search  there was no result for a desk that met my requirements so I thought, “Hey. I’ll make my own damn desk. ” Then my friends started asking me to make wired desks for them. Well, one friend, but he is a pretty smart guy. Being a UL certified shop for our lighting made it a breeze to make the jump to wiring up our furniture designs.

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