Four years ago, Microsoft unveiled a pioneering Sevil Peach design for its Netherlands office, inspired by the emerging concept of “activity-based working”. In the service of promoting social interaction and collaboration, the Schipol scheme got rid of all desks, going far beyond the established notion of hot-desking to “not-desking”. Employees were encouraged to work wherever they wanted, whether that was at home or in the office. Then, last year, Microsoft’s Vienna headquarters unveiled its own activity-based workplace design, by Austrian…

Catnapping in a “wall cocoon”? This term is Miami-based interior designer Piret Johanson’s name for a chaise longue built into a wall, where you can make a private phone call, read under a wall light or literally have a kip. Redolent of Verner Panton’s iconic Living Tower seating system of 1969, on which people can lounge at different levels, it’s hardly a form of seating you’d expect to find even in a relatively unconventional workplace. Yet this is one of…