AROUND HOME : Notes on a High Tech Desk, and Garden and Animal Events : Executive Workbench

IN THE MOVIE “Wall Street,” the bad-guy financier, played by Michael Douglas, masterminds his leveraged buyouts while seated at a Burdick Group desk. Actually, it’s not so much a desk as a desk system--the first of a new furniture breed, the executive workbench.

About 1975, San Francisco-based designer Bruce Burdick foresaw the implications the desktop computer, poised to invade the executive office, would pose. For starters, it meant a nightmare in wire management, what with communications and power cables. So Burdick conceived the idea of a horizontal raceway standing a few feet off the floor to conceal the wires.

The raceway also acts like the track in track lighting. It supports components that snap into place along its length without tools, thereby allowing the desk to be personalized and reconfigured instantly. Components can be endlessly daisy-chained. They include a desktop-like work surface, computer and printer stands, bookends, letter trays, and drawers and filing cabinets. Not to mention a credenza-like attachment with a hutch for working at a typewriter, a round glass top big enough for impromptu conferences, and a tool caddie analogous to an roll-top desk with cubbyholes for pads, pencils and Rolodex.

The top surfaces come in glass, wood, laminate and marble. Glass is the most popular because users invariably enjoy looking at the Burdick’s elegant superstructure.

Typical Burdick Group systems retail for $2,000 to $15,000, depending on configuration. At Herman Miller Office Pavilion in Irvine (714) 975-8700, and Herman Miller Inc. in the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles (213) 659-7600.