Multimodal WFH setup: flight SIM, EE lab, and music studio in 60sqft/5.5M²
80 comments
·August 9, 2025brunohaid
Oh, didn't think that'd make it to the front page, appreciated! OP and builder here.
The website was purely because a friend and I were looking for design work during lockdown and put together a couple of things we recently worked on, but basic design and build was a fun ~6 months solo project.
We had a good discussion on https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1mlo6hu/tryin... over the weekend with more details, but also happy to answer any questions here.
DarmokJalad1701
Sick flight sim setup!
I basically never sim now because of how much of a hassle it is to get the whole thing setup. And then it just sits taking up space on the desk and I don't use the desktop for anything else for a while.
brunohaid
Thanks! And: Same. It got much better since the early days of MSFS 2020, and tried picking gear that has solid drivers/good scripting APIs, but I also rarely get it out just for fun, for the same reasons (except the occasional barrel rolls in a TBM over Manhattan cravings). It is great to have for a bunch of practice runs before actually heading to a new airport for the first time though.
petcat
It looks great, but, (no offense), that looks like the most uncomfortable home-office seating arrangement of all time. Your legs can't fit under the desk, and the low-back chair looks like it's for show, not sitting. I fear for your back!
brunohaid
None taken! Cut the shelving to my (elbows at 90 degrees) standing desk height and used it that way about 80% of the time, and for the rest the drafting height barstool like chair worked well, as the legs are naturally angled.
Kiboneu
Hi, where do you get your industrial shelving?
brunohaid
doctorhandshake
I have a workbench from GI. It’s built like a tank and looks good, with a Boos Brothers solid maple top. YMMV but when I told them a big part of it came bent in shipping, they DGAF. That was not a good experience.
dbacar
site down because of us :D
jasonpeacock
That's a lot of words for "We put some industrial shelving in a closet with a keyboard and computer monitors, and we made it all beige."
isoprophlex
I'm sorry this clearly isn't beige, this is the color of simple warm and transparent functionality of contemporary Korean and Japanese hospitality and retail spaces!
iknowstuff
Haha this is the “Place, Japan ” meme
outside1234
"The software you just built is a complicated version of what I could have built in Excel."
FirmwareBurner
How else do you think designers can justify their inflated rates? Wrap it in in a fancy word salad to elevate it and sell it to wealthy urbanites.
Reminds me of that scene[1] from the Silicon Valley TV show where that designer was tasked to design a server box and he started the meeting showing random pictures to the CEO with some bongo drum soundtrack in order to "establish a common vocabulary" lol, or the brand manual of the infamous Pepsi logo redesign fail[2] full of made up geometrical nature BS stories that the agency pulled out of their ass to milk Pepsi, which I'm sure is what the satire form Silicon Valley was based on.
At this point, I think designers just operate on the basis of "a fool an his money are easily parted".
[1] https://youtu.be/qyLv1dQasaY?si=yUwQU-9EQL3QMxbi&t=6
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/hspqgd/pepsi_logo_r...
loa_in_
It's not foolish. Design is subjective and it's most often a question with no objectively good answer, so it's between the designer and whoever appraises his output. There's no secret design paradigm that makes everyone happy.
FirmwareBurner
>It's not foolish.
It is all about fooling the viewer. Like for example seeing some run down old buildings in US or Eastern Europe will make people scoff, but if you show them similar looking run down buildings in South Mediterranean Europe or Japan they will be in awe. It's about perception.
>Design is subjective
No it isn't. Just like art and people's appearances, there's unanimously objective on what's beautiful and what's ugly.
The redesigned Pepsi logo is objectively worse, which is why it was so short lived and reverted back to the original design.
People who say there's no such thing as ugly design because it's al subjective are coping hard or trying to sell their design agency.
zevon
The contrast between all that fancy equipment and the actual work surface being a cheap-as-can-be fibreboard (that will get nasty quickly and suck up all liquids) with a more or less unfinished edge that will probably feel uncomfortable is a bit too much of the designerly touch for me...
ahofmann
Man, I got carpal tunnel syndrome just from looking at the edge of that fibreboard. I couldn't work at that "desk" for 20 minutes.
brunohaid
Like mentioned in other comments standing desk height, concerned about it initially as well, but gave it a try and quite happy with the surface (it compresses easily and bit of treatment prevents it from getting gross in 3 months).
_fat_santa
It's cool but also kinda wild to hire a design firm to figure out the layout of your home office. Personally my home office is very "personal" and one of the things I enjoyed the most is figuring out where everything should go.
To me this is the same as hiring a development firm to build you a set of dotfiles.
tobr
If this was a write-up about someone’s personal WFH office setup, it would be pretty cool. Written as a case by a design firm it seems very underwhelming. It just looks like a tiny room crammed with equipment. Wouldn’t you at least go for custom-made shelving to use every last millimeter of the room as well as possible?
ajcp
If you read the writeup you'll see that it was part aesthetic choice and price consideration.
ajcp
The client is the "design firm". The website is for their own firm and they used their own office in their portfolio.
brcmthrowaway
This person is probably overemployed and making $1M
ubb_server
What makes you think that?
isoprophlex
The fact that there's a blog post by a design studio on how they shoved a bunch of shelves, acoustic padding, sixty computer monitors and a flight sim controller into a utility cupboard.
djtriptych
Love the term multimodal WFH.
Like you I have diverse, equipment-laden hobbies: guitar/piano/dj/drums/photography and work from home.
It's really hard to feel like you can quickly get to all of those activities, without reconfiguring -anything- and creating spaces tuned to all those things.
Love that this approach is easy to change w/ the industrial wall shelving.
Also appreciate touching on some of the specialized equipment that tends to come into play.
brunohaid
That was one of the weirdest effects of the space - it almost felt like transitioning from affairs to a marriage, in a good way.
Before that, I often used to work out of random / public places, and I when I got really stuck just change scenery. Being able to switch modes built that weird sense of home, knowing that when I get stuck, I can switch modes for a bit and do / work on something else, and no matter what the space would be there for me. Hard to describe without sounding too prosaic, but really glad to have built it.
perryh2
Here is my COVID bathroom office: https://x.com/perryfromsoma/status/1351396588615204872
tomas789
I love your setup. The ingenuity of such solution is outstanding. I have so many questions but I'm afraid to ask.
rlt
Very cool, any maybe some people are better at managing clutter, but I would make a huge mess of this space in days.
The EE lab would put it over the top for me.
vanchor3
I'm glad they put the two pieces of Blackmagic gear in the $135 rack mount shelf, just to set it on top of the desk in the end.
brunohaid
Used to be in the rack (bottom left) initially, but fiddling with it down there eventually got too annoying.
dpc_01234
How do you call these plug into holes every inch frames used for this? I could use something like this for related projects.
evanjrowley
There really is no precise name for these.
Source: A technology hoarder who has too many shelves like this full of junk.
Edit: I stand corrected by @bobson381
I have several of these under the Gorilla Rack brand name and they're sold as Industrial Shelving Units. Home Depot in the US also sells these under the Muscle Rack and Edsal brands. These shelves are good, but I caution against using them in rooms with uneven floors (i.e., basement floors) because the feet are not adjustable. The particle board shelf surfaces can also deteriorate easily in moist environments. OP's shelf is one coffee spill away from a ruined shelf. That particle board is also made with formaldehyde and water damage will release it, FYI.
I have even more Wire Rack Shelves from various brands, all mostly with interchangable parts. A major brand is Nexel. There's also a lot of good parts available through the Metro brand sold by The Container Store. I appreciate the Wire Rack Shelving for it's modularity, adjustable feet, and also the ability to use caster wheels. You can always cut your own solid shelf surface from whatever material you like. The drawback is these Wire Rack Shelves cost twice as much as the Industrial Shelving Units.
mxfh
Why not some finished birch plywood for surfaces you work on? I get worried about my wrists just looking at that particle board.
dpc_01234
Thanks. Good pointers.
I do have a whole rack in a garage kind of like it, but I was hoping I could get something nicer and painted like in the article, ideally with different length elements, so I could make custom furniture from them, and then just cut MDF boards to size or something.
evanjrowley
Good luck on your project! Btw, a lot of these racks come with plastic feet. You could cut shorter lengths from the bottom using an angle grinder or saw rated for metal, then hide the rough ends with the feet.
Actually, I don't know if those are really plastic feet, or if they're just added to prevent metal from poking holes in the cardboard box during shipping.
bobson381
Teardrop shelving! For the shape of the holes.
cameron_b
I'm guessing you mean the support structure for the desk and shelves, which seems to be a nicer version of something like
https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-4814/Wide-Span-Storag...
or perhaps the same thing ( in several sizes ) with a coat of gloss paint
ramses0
Also look into "SuperStrut" https://www.google.com/search?q=superstrut
brunohaid
Most common term in the US is something like Boltless Shelving, specific shelves used here were https://www.globalindustrial.com/c/storage/shelving/boltless...
guhcampos
This looks absolutely amazing, but since this is the Internet and people need to complain about stuff, I can't see the knit cloth mat working well with a wheeled chair!
brunohaid
Haha, very good (and true) observation - but turns out if you practice 6+ months, you develop a knack for pushing chairs over uneven terrain.
This looks cool, but I really don't understand the constraints here. You have high tens of thousands of dollars of gear, but can't afford a space larger than a closet for it? Where did the space constraint come from? Was it just to see if you could do it?
I'm just a bit perplexed as to how this particular combination of things came together.