Desk

A self-directed project using recycled plywood and steel to develop a corner desk.

Furniture Design

Year: 2026
Duration: 6 weeks
Medium: Wood, Metal, Recycled
Context: Self-led

Criteria and Design Development

Criteria:

Make the design flat pack, so it can be easily disassembled and moved.
Design and make in a week.
Design it to pair with my existing filing cabinets.

Second hand plywood — Bought 3 second-hand planks of 25mm thick plywood, each for only $10! Since this wood was previously used as shelving in a bike store, there were some minor limitations as compared to using new plywood. They were each cut into trapezoids, had a radius on all corners, the edges were painted, and both sides had received sun damage.

I already had two oak filing cabinets that I wanted to incorporate into the design. Designing with these cabinets transforms the desk into a full unit with storage. I spent a couple of days figuring out how I would connect three separate planks to make an L-shaped desk with minimal wastage.

Using an overlapping join to connect the wood?
Multi-levelled?
Using the legs as brackets?

A line drawing showing the overall plan view of a corner desk design.

Preliminary pencil sketches showing elevations for a corner desk unit using wood and metal.

I didn't want to permanently join the plywood pieces together, as that would have made the design harder to transport when disassembled. I decided to use the legs as brackets for the plywood, utilising precision to impermanently keep the planks together. I used Brad hole T nuts in the underside of the plywood, allowing the legs to be bolted on and off an infinite number of times.

Fabrication

Parts of the legs — The legs consist of two vertical steel pipes, welded to a flat bar at the top with milled holes (for the bolts), and another vertical flat bar welded further down to avoid slanting.

Each pair of legs is a different width, matching the width of the plywood its attaching to.

Close-up view of a steel rod connecting to a plywood piece during the fabrication stage.

A fabricated steel support piece with visible bolts resting on a wooden workbench.

Due to the legs being 90° from the desk/floor, the legs were prone to swaying. I did consider making them angled for stability, but didn’t think it’d be possible with the time I had. To mitigate the problem, I made cross bars for the 3 sets of legs. Each end was flattened so they could bolt on.

Test fit! Still sways... — Unfortunately, the cross-bars weren’t enough to stop the swaying, so I had to hit the drawing board again. The solution I thought was the most obvious was to somehow incorporate triangles to increase tension and stability, but how? I considered wooden brackets, blocking out the negative space between legs, and diagonal crossbars between legs. All of these seemed to be too time-consuming and also not very aesthetic, so I decided to incorporate wire tensioning and turnbuckles.

Close-up view of a steel bracket and cable attachment on a metal desk prototype.

Close-up view of the steel frame and green plywood top of the corner desk prototype.

Install!

Final Design

A self-led corner desk featuring plywood and steel components in a room setting.

Desk

Criteria and Design Development

Fabrication

Final Design

Tei

Contour

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