- 2009Marlies Romberg, a graduate of the Utrecht School of Arts, presents Dear Diary 1.0, a computer embedded in a wooden desk with a keyboard laser-cut into its surface.
- 2009The wooden computer and desk appear in Wallpaper’s report from the eighth Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven.
- 2010Design Milk features the piece, which is still circulating on design blogs months later.
- 2012The French studio Orée sells the Orée Board, a Bluetooth keyboard carved from a single piece of maple or walnut.
What it was
In the summer of 2009, Marlies Romberg, a recent graduate of the Utrecht School of Arts, showed a computer that had been absorbed into a piece of furniture. She called it Dear Diary 1.0. It was a traditional wooden desk with a computer built into it. The keyboard was laser-cut directly into the desktop. The screen was housed in wood, and a wooden mouse sat beside it. A small USB stick in porcelain and silicone, called Topsecret, came with the set.
Romberg framed the project as a meeting point between the physical and the digital. At a time when nearly every computer was plastic or aluminum, she gave one the materials and proportions of an old writing desk. The name makes the reference plain. A diary is something you write at a desk, alone, in private, and a personal computer had quietly taken over that role.
The machine stayed industrial. The desk around it softened, one accessory at a time.
Where the idea went
Dear Diary 1.0 had a short public life. It appeared in Wallpaper’s report from Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven that October, and design blogs were still featuring it in early 2010. We found no production version, no edition for sale and no follow-up model. It remained a one-off graduation piece.
The wish behind it moved to smaller objects. In 2012 the French studio Orée began selling a Bluetooth keyboard carved from a single block of maple or walnut and assembled by hand. Small workshops now sell wooden monitor risers, desk shelves, headphone stands and wrist rests, many through ordinary online stores. The computer itself did not follow. Laptops and monitors are still made of aluminum, glass and plastic. Wood moved to the surfaces around the machine, the places where hands and eyes rest.
What it means now
Romberg’s piece asked why the object people use most at home looks like nothing else in it. Seventeen years on, the answer is only partial. The machine stays industrial. The desk around it has softened, one accessory at a time.
That split may be the realistic version of her idea. A computer built into a desk ties the life of the timber to the life of the electronics, and electronics age much faster than a good piece of oak. A wooden stand or shelf, by contrast, can stay on the desk while several screens and laptops come and go. If Dear Diary 1.0 was a statement about warmth at the desk, the market has answered it with furniture, not hardware.
The original post, summarized
Our 2009 post covered Marlies Romberg’s wooden computer workstation, a desk with an integrated computer, a laser-cut wooden keyboard, a monitor and a wooden mouse, made to bring a sense of the physical world to digital work. It is summarized here rather than republished.
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Sources
- Onelargeprawn: Dear Diary 1.0, A Wooden Workstation by Marlies Romberg (Aug 11, 2009)
- Wallpaper*: Dutch Design Week report
- Wikipedia: Dutch Design Week
- Design Milk: Wooden Computer Workstation (Jan 25, 2010)
- Techgoondu: Hands-on, Orée Board, a Bluetooth keyboard made of wood (Dec 11, 2012)
- Oakywood: Desk Shelf dual monitor stand
- The Gadgeteer: Oakywood Desk Shelf review
- Amazon: Glorious Wooden Wrist Rest, Tenkeyless listing
- Watercooling UK: Glorious keyboard wrist rest, TKL, wood