After a week of redesigning and redefining, here is a half scale model of the desk. These first two images shows the left hand side with deflectors which made it look a little flat, but it provides a little bit of rigidity to the second level that is required when a monitor it put on top of it.

These second set of images here, Mark, our professor, suggested removing the deflectors to see how it would look.

Without the deflectors, it does look a lot more like as if the second level is floating. This will present some engineering challenges.