Life is too short and we spend too much time at work to have a boring desk. Deskorate your workspace with these fun office decor finds.

While other countries have seemed to master the 30-hour work week, the 40-hour work week (or more) is still the norm in the United States. Whether you have a sitting or standing desk, that’s a lot of time to be surrounded by plain old cubicle walls. You take the time to create a welcoming space at home, why not add some office decor to kick your things up a notch at work? Your workspace can feel a little more like your home away from home with the addition of some fun office decor.

Fun Office Decor

1. Terrarium Kit

Not only is a succulent terrarium a great way to add some greenery to your desk, you can DIY with this fun kit.

2. Desk Light Bulb Lamp

One way to add a bit of ambiance is with light. While your employer might frown on the use of candles, no one could issue with this vintage-style USB bulk lamp as fun and functional office decor.

3. USB Mini Lights

Mini string lights are another way to make your desk feel a little more personal and chill.

4. Cork Globe

Form and function are combined in this cork globe. Daydream about traveling the world while pinning up reminder notes about tomorrow’s staff meeting.

5. Bear Letter Organizer

Display your love of the wild and stay organized with this wire bear letter or filer holder.

6. Light Box Daily Inspirational Sign

Have a little bit of fun and share some daily inspiration with your coworkers with this lighted sign.

7. Suspension Bridge Bookends

Who says all those binders on your desk can’t be held up with these cool architectural bookends?

8. Desk Organizer

The office world is made of too much plastic, particle board, and fluorescent lighting. Add something made from the natural world to changes things up a bit.

9. Ceramic Desk Organizer

How cute is this ceramic bowl and notepad holder? They are perfect for holding push pins, paper clips, and other ephemera of the office world.

10. Walnut Speakers

Listen to NPR, or your latest daily mix from Spotify, with these super cool looking computer speakers.

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This week’s Link Love: would you wear a dress that turns transparent every time you Tweet? Remember the movie “Office Space”? Get ready to build your own beehive, green your wardrobe and use essential oils.

This dress turns transparent every time you Tweet? Wow. [via Jezebel]

It’s National Pollinator Week. So build your own beehive already. [via Eat Drink Better]

Ha. Did the movie “Office Space” rid the world of “flair?” Should we feel happy or sad about this? [via A.V. Club]

We’re loving the new GirlieGirlArmy video series. First one: How to Green Your Wardrobe [via GirlieGirlArmy]

Easy ways to use essential oils. [via Living Libations]

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The post Link Love: What ‘Office Space’ Did for Humanity + The Tweeting Dress + DIY Beehive appeared first on EcoSalon.

Walk into a typical office supply store and you’ll be greeted with a depressing array of cheap, generic-looking plastic products emitting the oh-so-tantalizing scent of off-gassing carcinogens. But there’s a magical happy place at the intersection of sustainability and design, where eco friendly products for the office can be super useful and even decorative, and it can be found on the Internet.  Here are 8 items for both home workstations and the office, from cradle-to-cradle desk chairs to sculptural air purifiers.

Chikuno Cube Charcoal Air Purifier

Plants are one of the best, easiest and cheapest ways to purify the air in your workspace, but what about smells? You can’t control whether your colleague microwaves horrific-smelling foods for lunch or wears too much perfume, but you can control the odors in your own little work area with a small desktop purifier like the Chikuno Cube. This odorless cube is made from ultra-fine activated bamboo charcoal and clay minerals to absorb smells, and it has the look of a modern sculpture.

Atmos Geodesic ‘Cubicle’ for Desk Privacy

Cubicles are rarely pleasant places to work, but sometimes, you just need a little bit of privacy. The Atmos by Olero is a light, airy modular enclosure for any desk. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic structures and the triangle-frame sculptures of Do Ho Suh, it sections off your workspace while still letting in light, and it looks nice, too.

IKEA Sunnan Solar-Powered Desk Lamp

Need an eco friendly desk lamp? Look no further than your nearest IKEA. Inexpensive and frill-free, this LED lamp gets its power from the sun, even though it’s designed for indoor use. It recharges in about 9-12 hours in sunlight, emits about the same amount of light as a 15-watt incandescent bulb, and will light at full power for three hours once charged. For each Sunnan lamp purchased, IKEA and UNICEF will give one to a child in a refugee camp or village with no electricity.

Pulpop Recycled MP3 Speaker

Plug your mp3 player into a USB-rechargeable speaker made of recycled pulp that doubles as desk decor. The Pulpop speaker has a ring-shaped chamber that amplifies sound way better than you’d expect from cardboard.

Desktop Bamboo Dry-Erase Board

If you’re still in the habit of writing down quick notes instead of using your tablet or phone, you can save a whole lot of paper with a desktop dry-erase board. This one at Uncommon Goods is one example of a bamboo dry-erase board ideal for your to-do lists and random scribblings, and you can also turn any bamboo surface (or virtually any smooth surface at all) by coating it with a little bit of dry-erase sealant. Get the tutorial at Imulus.

Bamboo Plywood Workstation by El Dot Designs

Minimalist hairpin legs and a smooth surface make this desk by El Dot Designs a beautiful addition to the office, but it’s more than just a good-looking modern desk. It’s made of bamboo ply with a  non-toxic, water-based finish and features a movable power supply with three outlets and two USB ports. It’s also got a magnetic dry-erase board and a bamboo bag hook on the underside.

Cobi Office Chair

Few things are more important in an office than the chair you’re sitting in all day long, day after day. There are lots of desk chairs out there that provide comfort and support for long work hours, but few of them are on their way to Cradle-to-Cradle certification. The Cobi Chair by Steelcase features a weight-activated adjustment mechanism that naturally puts you in the best position of comfort for your body, sensing your center of gravity. It’s a low-emitting product and has a sustainable lifecycle – the Steelcase Environmental Partnership program will help you responsibly resell, refurbish, donate or recycle the chair when it’s no longer useful to you.

Bamboo Zen Stand for Tablets and Smart Phones

Support your tablet or smart phone with the Lexon Zen Stand, a simple bamboo accessory with rubber stabilizers that will hold onto your gadget safely. It’s also super useful for reading recipes when you’re cooking, or using your phone like an alarm clock next to the bed.

All images courtesy manufacturers. 

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Sustainable energy, check; low emissions, check; hundreds of rows of parked cars, huh?

If you haven’t already heard of Abengoa, which is based in Seville, southern Spain, you soon will: it’s coming to the U.S. in a big way. The multinational tech company is currently building two major solar thermal power stations, both due for completion in 2013. One of these, Solana in Arizona, will be the largest of its kind in the world with a stratospheric budget of $2 billion. With an output of 280MW, it will be able to power 70,000 homes. It will also give a massive jolt to the local economy, and spur some new office space.

As you know, we love poking our heads into OPC (Other People’s Cubicles). What we’ve discovered is that high-tech companies these days tend to lead the way in offering quirky, stimulating workplaces for their employees. While the headquarters of this technology company gets the thumbs up in terms of sustainability, it’s not as creative as you’d expect for a modern, cutting-edge company. It also has some unexpectedly backwards policies in terms of fume-spewing and clock-watching.

Abengoa’s Campus Palmas Altas (meaning: Tall Palms) makes their own electricity using a variety of methods, including photo-voltaic panels, parabolic troughs, and a tri-generation plant (which produces electricity, heat and cold). In all, they produce 70% of the energy they consume. Impressive – this is 164,000 square feet of offices we’re talking about.

Their premises – seven low-rise blocks – are cooled using vigas frias (chilled beams), metal pipes that run through the ceiling, filled with cold water. The temperature of the liquid adjusts to the air, keeping the 2,500 boffins at a comfortable, constant temperature. That is no mean feat in Seville, where summer temperatures often top 115 degrees.

Other ways of dealing with the fierce Andalucian sun include self-shading. The buildings are arranged in a linear layout so that each block protects the next from those rays. But they make the most of natural lighting, thanks to glass walls; there are also horizontal shades, and some buildings have huge fixed-position glass screens, which cut the glare by up to 40%.

Such is the sustainable nature of this complex that’s been certified as LEED Platinum, the first to earn this distinction in Europe. It also won the Excellence in Design Award from the American Institute of Architects’ UK Chapter.

However, some aspects of the campus strike us as strange, from the uninspiring buildings to the wholly un-ecological transport situation. Unnerving, too: the monitoring of employees’ movements. I’m talking, spooky, Big Brother-type monitoring.

In terms of the building’s design, as award-winning and sustainable as it may be, it leans towards the prosaic rather than the stunningly visual. Architect Richard Rogers, Pritzker Prize winner, maverick designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and, closer to home, World Trade Center Tower 3, says the scheme “creates a new model for the business park, one that is… more compact and urban than conventional business parks”.

Moreover, since Abengoa required such a large site, the offices are located in a dead area next to a freeway. As such, public transport is virtually non-existent thus creating a major sticking point. How is that such an ostensibly green company could end up with a gargantuan car parking area sprawled out next to it? It’s as big as the campus itself and a visible reminder of polluting emissions and personal accountability thereof.

The spaces closest to the offices (under them, in fact) are for pregnant women, those with young children at the on-site nursery (highly innovative in backwards southern Spain), and those with mobility issues. Social awareness 10 points; pollution control, 0 points.

To be fair, the company is trying to implement various alternative transport ideas – cycle lanes, carpooling, free shuttle buses – but for a visitor, the first impression of this company, whose motto is “innovative technology for sustainability,” smacks of, “we heart fossil fuels.”

With an on-site gym and restaurants, Abengoa is doing its best to keep its 2,500 employees around all day – it’s very unusual in Andalucia not to nip home for lunch at ones mom’s place (most under 35s live at home) followed by a siesta. You might be thinking, and…so what? But for a Spaniard, that comes as a major culture shock. All activities, including restaurant visits and photocopying, are monitored by their electronic ID tag. Any and all transgressions are penalized.

These curtailments in movement have led to the nicknames “Centro Penitenciario Abengoa” and “Palmatraz” among staff.

Abengoa is a force to be reckoned with in the solar power world. They’ve just secured $400 million of funding from a U.S. private equity firm and are behind a $2 billion solar power project in the Mojave Desert. Indeed, they are showing us the way forward in the green economy. But let’s hope they sort out some buses soon – and advance their work/life initiatives into the 21^st Century.

Images: Panal Lira; Mark Bentley Photography; El Mundo; David Aureo

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