Teenage Engineering make much of how they use “double-sided birch plywood”, which indeed makes a nice top. I know because the scrap I bought at IKEA’s as-is for my daughter’s desk is solid and good-looking.
Then they cover it with formica, i.e. 1950s counter- and tabletop material. 
If you think that’s a bit under priced might I interest you in this almost $500 rolling table
I don’t know where I thought this headline was taking me, but this place sure wasn’t it.
“Teenage Engineering” is the name of a company?
They make desks designed to ‘not go in rooms’?
Is it a camping desk?
‘Whenever I go camping, I need to be sure I can catch up on some light paperwork.’
No thanks. Give me a desk made by a grown-up and priced for a pauper.
(nothing against teenagers - all most of the ones I’ve met are smarter than me).
ETA: Not a bad name for an emo shoegaze band.
I have had similar questions of late. When they first showed up I liked their style – I guess I still do – but now it seems like they’re just openly mocking people for buying their stuff. And at the same time as this Vitra nonsense, they’re also selling out on the mass-market end with a line of gadgets in Ikea.
Also they’ve increased the price of the OP-1 without updating it.
At one point they sold cool-looking premium 3.5mm patch cables on their website; recently I got an audio gadget which came with a box of 3 generic cheapo patch leads, and was surprised to see the box had TE branding.
My guess would be it’s basically the same people, but the early playfulness has given way to a manic desperation to pay off their enormous coke debt.
I mean, under the circumstances that feels like a read.
Engineering grade? Is military grade aluminium too declasse?
I am familiar with them from their electronics stuff - they make several very nice bits of electronic musical kit that I lust over, but would have no idea how to use
I could build one of those myself. I would just need a desk to work on and…
Well played.
That’s been replaced by “tactical aluminum”
My desk from 1978 to 2001 or so was a hollow core door and two file cabinets. Huge amounts of storage and desk space. Great for homework, model making, computer building, writing, stop motion animation, gaming and anything else you wanted to do from the ages of 12-35. It’s final use was as a temporary kitchenette (microwave, toaster oven, hot plate, kettle, etc.) when we remodeled our house. We still have the file cabinets.
I have a 1950’s formica covered side table from my family and it looks like I could have bought it last year still. Love it. They built those things to withstand a nuclear blast I think.
Same! But sawhorses instead of file cabinets, so no storage for me. However the space was amazing! It made an excellent gaming table. Plus removing the doorknob gave you a cable hole when it later became my giant computer desk. One of the best desks I’ve ever had, I’m now realizing! 
Speaking of door desks…
My desk for close to 30 years is also a solid core door. It belonged to my original business partner. He built it with 2x4 legs with a nice apron around it. It was stained a light color with quite a urethane finish. The edges and legs are black. I added a large keyboard drawer and a monitor arm.
It’s so solid that when the tornado or apocalypse comes you’ll be able to find me and the wife hunkered down under it with the cats and some sandwiches.
When I was briefly working at an internet media startup in 2000 our first office space was populated with about a dozen “desks” like this! They were cheap, and great and worked really well!
Then we moved into a larger space, bought “cool” desks, Herman Miller chairs, and went out of business 5 months later.
Good times
It seems especially bad when the pitch is ‘customization’; but the product skips using one of the more widely available structural framing systems in favor of their own.
I’m not enough of a framing system wonk to judge the design decisions their system makes; and I’m not expecting them to just give me a “here’s what to get at the local hardware store to undercut us by a substantial margin” guide for free; but when it comes to customization not being widely available from multiple sources that aren’t a single pricey boutique vendor is pretty important.
Sure, being made from recycled material is nice; but this is aluminum; that’s among the materials most likely to be recycled purely because the economics are favorable outside of precious metals, so that’s a comparatively minor selling point.
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