Tiny House Tuesday

There are still a few hours to go on the poll about what you'd like to see next on a Tuesday on Shedworking but while there seems to be considerable support for a Tiny House slot, there have been sufficient votes for the others to indicate plenty of alternative interests. So what's going to happen is a four-week rotation of each, starting today with Tiny House Tuesday, next week Beach Hut Tuesday, etc. Here then is the Boxhome, a 19 square metre shedlike atmosphere with four rooms - kitchen/dining room, bathroom, living room and bedroom. as seen on/in Dwell by architect Sami Rintala in Oslo. Dwell's Clare Dudman, who compares it rightly to the Tardis, says:

"At first glance the Boxhome does indeed look like a small box, its walls a shiny gray metal crisscrossed with insulating glass. Scarcely wider than the length of a person, it is striking and oddly beautiful. It is practical, too. The walls are many-layered: A timber frame houses glass wool insulation clad with particleboard; then there is a special weather-coat layer, an insulating space allowing air to circulate in two directions; and, finally, metal cladding."

The Boxhome was designed for one person but there's certainly room for guests. Rintala is quoted as saying “Maybe this is how we are meant to be, with few possessions and a small space around us.” Or as Dudman says: "Maybe we all need something like a Boxhome from time to time—a quiet santtuary, a small space for our minds to fill." Quite right. The article itself is well worth a browse, as is pretty much everything at Dwell.

Sami Rintala's The Mill

Sami Rintala's Boxhome has rightly been all over the interweb, but I also think his The Mill (pictured above and below) is a lovely shedworking atmosphere. It's actually a proposal, with Janne Saario, for a shelter for kayakers on the Halikko River in Finland.I also rather like the look of his Mountain cottage
Via the coolhunter

No Man's Island

According to Rintala Eggertsson Architects it's a proposal for a new island in front of Kirkenes, Norway, a neutral architectural meeting zone for The Barents Sea. But we think it looks like a...Via designboom
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Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Clare Dudman: shedworker

We featured Clare Dudman's 'appearance' on Lead Balloon just before Christmas and so here is the feature on Clare which appeared in The Shed magazine 15 for those of you who missed it and wanted some more detail about her garden office:

I am a writer and I work from home. I have a perfectly good office: it is warm, quiet, with a view of the street so why should I need somewhere else? The problem with my office is it is too well-connected. It has a phone and I love talking to people. It also has broadband. Blogging, twittering, emailing: I love it all - rather too much. I needed to escape. I needed somewhere I could go to be alone with my old unconnected laptop and write.

I had the idea of a shed a few years ago but I really became inspired after I interviewed Sami Rintala in Oslo about his Boxhome - a tiny space for one person. What do we really need to live? Very little it seems to me. And yet we fill houses with stuff. I was also inspired by reading about Daphne DuMaurier in Justine Picardie's novel 'Daphne'. Even posh old Daphne DuMaurier worked in a shed - wrapped in blankets when it was cold - so why shouldn't I? In fact there seemed to be all sorts of famous writers who worked in sheds - Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl, George Bernard Shaw. There was obviously an excellent precedent.

So one wet day in March my husband and I toured a few garden centres. This one seemed ideal. It is 8 feet by 8 feet and it had a good thick skeleton supporting its outer cladding. We elected to have treated bearings and floor and we decided to have toughened glass in case something hit the window. There are five windows altogether, the diamond leading is standard.

We stood in a Welsh garden centre and listened to rain pounding on the roof and looked around us. There is something comforting about listening to the rain in a shed. Yes, we thought. This will do. We put the shed at the side of the house which was already paved for a washing line. It is a sheltered spot and has a good view of our small garden. After it had been delivered and assembled in early in early April, we went to the DIY store for supplies: we decided on recycled polyester fleece for insulation, and fibreboard, already treated, for the lining.These were attached using brass screws and caps - attractive and functional. My husband also wired in a couple of sockets and a florescent light from an adjacent shed. The floor was varnished several times with dark oak floor varnish. I have added a mat (for added insulation), a table-like desk, a chair and a light. It works well. Not only have I already produced a chapter of a book, but I have learnt things too: birds do not sing their own songs any more, but imitate the trappings of modern life: mobile phone trills and car alarm squawks.

When I sit inside I feel like I have left everything behind, and all there is left to do is write.

You can read more about Clare and her excellent novels at www.claredudman.com and read her equally smashing blog Keeper of the Snails
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Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.