At London's W hotel, for instance, Concrete worked around small rooms by combining a sink and a writing desk into a functional but eye-catching white module.

WSJ: Inn With the New

All have been individually decorated, so it is impossible to generalize, but ours came with cream walls, bleached wooden floors covered by sisal matting, wicker screens, a four-poster king-size bed, wingback armchairs, a large writing desk, dramatic framed black-and-white photography and decoration that ranged from traditional African sculptures to a tower of Louis Vuitton steamer trunks.

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To your right is an open-air lounge with plush orange sofas, a coffee table stocked with games like Monopoly and Pictionary, and a white-washed writing desk that serves as a freestanding bar offering an array of cooling drinks.

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And myself sitting at a desk and writing quickly.

NEWYORKER: So It Is in Life

When I first put the partial cremains of my father in a Tupperware sandwich box and placed it on my writing desk, that was the joke I felt like telling.

NEWYORKER: Dead Man Laughing

He is sitting behind his desk, hunched over a legal pad, writing something.

NEWYORKER: The TV

To demonstrate: as I sit writing this blog, I glance at a ball point pen on my desk.

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My mom, who is writing a memoir based on letters her dad sent back from WWII, works at the same roll-top desk my dad first used as an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s.

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