Ella Annoucements: garden office being built on twitter

Stationery and gifts specialist Ella Announcements is tweeting regularly today about the build of her garden office by Vivid Green which she won in the recent Remote Employment awards (which Shedworking helped to judge). You can catch up on work so far here.
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When garden offices go bad...

Sadly, not everybody's introduction to shedworking is a happy one. Here's an email I recently received from a reader sharing his sad story (and if anybody has any advice, please share it below) about a company that I'm glad to say has never been featured on Shedworking:

The garden office was bought from these jokers who have a good pedigree and were selling for the right sort of price (our 14'x10' insulated, double glazed shed cost £4,500 initially). I'm not sure but I think they're having staffing issues and personal issues at the moment though and that badly affected their work. I also think garden offices is a relatively new venture for them so their experience in sorting problems was limited.

The photo shows the main problems we've had which to my untrained eye seems to be creeping damp. The shed is sat on a concrete base which does hold water (in the way that concrete does), but the office is mounted on runners, so you'd imagine it wouldn't matter. This damp has now crept on three of the four walls and there's also a spot on the roof.

We've sacked the company now and paid them a percentage of the total and they're happy just to skulk off into the background. We've now got a builder who says that he thinks all of the issues are caused by water evaporating from the floor and rising into the walls. There's currently nothing to stop it and because the rest of the shed is so well insulated the water can't get out. He says that the nuclear option he's going to apply is to lift the shed and line the base with an impermeable membrane, so even if water evaporates up then it shouldn't get into the shed. And that's hopefully it, but I'd certainly appreciate any thoughts you may have.

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Wednesday's posts are sponsored by The Garden Room Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here.

Sleepbox

It's turning into mobile shedworking Tuesday here: here's the Sleepbox from arch group. It's a small mobile space, 2m x 1.4m x 2.3m, which includes a bed and is aimed at those in transport hubs and exhibition spaces who want some quiet time. So while it offers a bed for the night, it also provides a built-in LCD TV, WiFi, and sockets for a laptop/charging phones and would thus be great for shedworking on the move.Via dezeen

The Sukkah Seat

Mobile shedworking is becoming ever more popular with all kinds of gadgets to help you work while you're on the move: also on the up are temporary shedlike atmospheres and while the one-person pop-up SukkahSeat by Charles and Julian Boxenbaum of BUZstudios is not specifically designed for working on the move (actually it's for the intermediate days of Sukkot), it could easily be adapted for just that purpose. It has a spring-loaded frame, seat and fold down armtable. It all fits nicely into a special carrying case, The SukkahSack. For those familiar with your talmudic units of measure, the SukkahSeat is 9 x 9 tefachim and and approximately 18 tefachim in height.

If you're after a prefab portable Sukkah, pop along to the Sukkah Centre which has a remakable range including bamboo and fibreglass.

Via Tablet Magazine

Office on wheels: 70 years ago

Office on Wheels Keeps Employees Close to the Job
TO SAVE time and footwork on the part of employees, officials of a German museum in Munich rigged an office on wheels that could be rolled through the corridors and exhibition rooms during an inventory of museum displays. Desks, typewriter, wastebasket, and bench were mounted on a caster-wheel hand truck, as shown in the photograph at the right. A museum attendant pushed the mobile office from one exhibit to the next.

Popular Science, May 1939 onModern Mechanix
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Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Avatar Creative: Shedworkers

Berkshire-based design and marketing agency Avatar Creative has recently moved into a garden office which they describe as a "great success". Here's what they say:

The "Green" office is proving a fantastic environment to work in and plenty of great creative work has already been produced. The only trouble we have is over who gets control of the remote for the climate air system. All clients and suppliers are more than welcome to pop in and see us – give us a call and we'll flick the kettle on, even better if you've got a new project to discuss!

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Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Bark Design: Shedworkers

While we tend to picture shedworking as the preserve of one or two-person bands, there's absolutely no restriction on how many people can work in a shedlike environment. Here is the gorgeous steel and glass pavilion which Bark Architects designed for themselves, perched on four steel footings between two Bloodwoods and featuring fixed glazing on three sides with the fourth a plywood-clad box. Here's what they say about it:

The main linear workspace was conceived as an open verandah with compactly scaled service spaces plugging in along its length... A mezzanine serves as a retreat by accommodating architecture books, quiet reading, sleeping or bathing. The solidity of its form is punctured by glass slots, providing cropped horizontal views of the hinterland and coast.

Via arch daily
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Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Banyon Drive Treehouse

A lovely shedworking space in Brentwood, California, designed by Rockefeller Partners Architects who describe it as "part office/studio, part recreational getaway" for an artist who is keen on nature. Twelve feet off the ground, it is built at the base of a large semi-fallen pine tree in the owner's back garden "as a creative respite from the demands of domestic responsibilities". As well as a working space, it has a day bed and lavatory and comes with deep-oiled wood siding, mahogany windows, and a Rheinzink roof. Lots more photos of the construction and the finished beauty at the architect's site. Photos by Eric StaudenmaierVia Dwell (do read the comments on the post there) by Tiny House Blog

Ontario Design Show: Shed theme

The Ontario Interior Design Show claims to be Canada's largest contemporary design fair and the 2010 show next January promises to be a particularly interesting one for shedworkers since one of the feature exhibits - Five Small Rooms - is dedicated to shedlike atmospheres. Here's what they say:

Spotted in the trendiest international design magazines or perhaps in your neighbour’s backyard, the podspace, aka the shed or bunky is au courant. Ontario residents are taking advantage of a building bylaw allowing 100 sq ft free-standing units without a building permit. On both city and country property, used as an office or studio, guest room, kids’ play room or den, these 100sq ft spaces serve a multitude of functions while extending one’s living space. See how 5 designers, decorators and stylists each transform a basic 100 sq ft shed into a small room.

One for the diary.

Not in my backyard

Artist Rob Voerman is perhaps more accurately described as an architectural sculpture and much of his work has distinct shedlike tendencies. Above is his Not in my backyard made from steel, glass and polycarbonate which went on display earlier this year at the Biennial Open Source in Amsterdam. Here's what he says about it:

In the sculpture, various different functions/references are combined: shed, nightclub, church and bar. Slightly opposing the highly controlled/designed Dutch society.Occasionally the work will be used by local inhabitants in a somewhat informal way. Part of the work will be, that the vegetation around the work will not be controlled and grow wild during the exhibition

It's well worth having a browse around the rest of his work and the philosophy behind it.
Thanks to Lloyd Alter for the alert
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