Marcos Kotlhar, chief creative officer at Ogilvy, had to get crafty when he was forced to rethink how he worked from home. Here he tells us about his improvised office set-up in the greenhouse he built on his Brooklyn roof terrace, and how he’s in no hurry to return to the way things were pre-coronavirus.
As the pandemic continues to unfold, the living room of my home in Brooklyn is slowly turning into a daycare center, with my very mobile toddler taking over every square foot. Which means my work set-up has become impossible. So, as a resilient NY dweller, I’ve had to get crafty, and for the past two weeks, I’ve been test-driving a tiny greenhouse I built on my terrace, with a powerful heater to keep me alive.
After days of troubleshooting climate control, my pop-up office space has so far been a great experience. It’s basically a tiny shell with just enough space for a decent size desk and a good chair, but the psychological separation is quite effective. I totally forget that I’m home and this has been the most focused I’ve been since I started working remotely.
The set-up is very improvised. A sheet of plywood with clamp-on legs make a desk. The laptop stand is also improvised as I can never find one for my height, so I put one together with a few scrap pieces of wood. I added a nice Soviet-era Czech desk lamp to help make it all feel very considered and help elevate the makeshiftness of it all with some good design.
Read more at The Drum (Marcos Kothlar)