Underground shedworking

I've always fancied the idea of working in an underground garden office, but strangely, despite the many obvious advantages to underground building (energy efficiency, low environmental impact, flexible adaption to terrain) there are very few examples around. If you are interested in what can be built under the grass rather than on top of it, perhaps the best first stop is a browse around Malcolm Wells' site which is dedicated to "the promotion and discussion of underground buildings, earth-sheltered architecture, eco-friendly design, and energy-efficient houses". Among the examples of Malcolm's earth shelter designs is the Cherry Hill, NJ Architectural Office pictured above, built next to a six lane highway.More details about underground construction at Sustainable Build.

Underground shedworking: go to work in a bunker

This property which has just come on the market is in 2.68 acres of grassland at Bervie Brow, Inverbervie, a two-bedroomed property with a significant shedlike difference: it has an underground structure used in the 1950s as a military command centre. While the estate agents suggest this 9,000 sq.ft bunker which is built on variouslevels could be a mushroom farm, wine store or night club, it would of course be a marvellous underground co-shedworking premises. Here are their details:

Access to the adjoining subterranean structure is from the ground floor along the aforementioned corridor. As stated there is a labyrinth of rooms with the main floor comprising a plant room, kitchen and toilet facilities and 12 other rooms of various dimensions. The main floor area is estimated to be approximately 5625 square feet with the entire outer structure having walls approximately 10ft thick. In the complex there is a room on two levels and from there travelling along the corridors, the walls of which have metres of piping, you encounter huge steel doors leading to the safe room, more accommodation, toilet facilities and kitchen area. The mezzanine floor comprises 9 rooms extending to approximately 3437 square feet.
Thanks to Cathy Dobson for the alert.

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Underground garden office

We've covered various underground shedworking possibilities before on the site, but this one (see on the excellent Tiny House Blog) is perhaps the nearest to being genuinely practicable. The video is a step-by-step guide to using a shipping container to build an underground room (with advice on how not to be buried alive or flooded out too...).
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Dun 25: Underground shedworking

We are extremely partial to underground garden offices here at Shedworking HQ and have reported on numerous bunker builds over the years. One of the finest is Dun 25, a three man nuclear bunker 20ft underground that is being restored by Jim Sherrit in a field near Edzell in Scotland (it is also a strong contender for Shed of the Year).

As garden offices go, it has some intriguing features - it can withstand a nuclear attack and has an entrance by hatch/vertical ladder. The dimensions of the main operations room are 15.5ft by 7.5ft. Jim's goal is to return it to working order and make it open to people studying the Cold War so they can experience history first hand.

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Village Underground - carriageworking

The marvellous shedlike offices of Shoreditch-based Village Underground, which were on show over the weekend as part of Open House London, are highlighted by Bonnie Alter at Treehugger (where there are lots more photos). Covered with graffiti on the outside, slickly smart on the inside, these four ex-Tube carriages have been lobbed onto Victorian arches and turned into offices. Good Treehugger that she is, Bonnie points out that all the cars have carbon-neutral heat and power and are ecologically outfitted. The carriages/creative studios are part of what Village Underground describe as a new cultural space in the area. Shedworking at its finest. And at this rate we'll have to start up a new carriageworking site.

Underground garden office: Atelier Pam&Jenny

The idea of an underground shedworking location has always appealed to the Shedworking HQ staff so we were particularly taken by this lovely construction by Belgian architects L'Escaut for graphic designer Nathalie who lives in Uccle. Two thirds of the garden office are underground and there is also a pleasing 'English type' courtyard as well as roughly sawn oak ceiling and flooring elements which, they say, "wrap everything up into a warm cocoon". Here's what the designers say about it:

"Seen from the house, the workshop is not anything else than a small part of the garden that would have been extruded, with a green roof snatched from the ground grass. The plants constituting the latter were chosen precisely in this sense among some varieties of herbaceous and grasses to resemble as closely as possible to the prairie grass and thus reinforce this perception of nature. The roof whose level is uncommonly lower than eye level, becomes a true fifth façade, as the real function is also betrayed by the presence of a hidden glass opening among the grasses.

Photos: François Lichtlé -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Treeshedworking Week - Dallas Arboretum

Luxury real estate brokerDoug Newby has some marvellous photos of tree houses from the Dallas Arboretum Ultimate Tree House exhibit. Above is the very shedlike The Underground Treehouse with earth walls designed by F&S Partners. Here's what they say about it:

"The Underground Tree explores the idea of what it feels like to be ten feet underground. From the outside, it appears as a simple cube of PolyGal with wood cladding. The roof top garden serves as the only hint that something out of the ordinary is happening. Upon entering the cube however, a completely different story is told. Roots flourish above your head, like a marriage of unruly hair and long, bewitched fingers. A dirt wall anchors the structure and whets your appetite for the next engaging experience. Another wall, filled with educational marvels galore, beckons you demanding your attention and capturing your imagination. Take a look through the periscope and view what ants and other insects would see if they were meandering through the above rooftop garden."

Not so good in the drizzle, but lovely for some summer shedworking is the Ultimate Blooms below from The BECK Group, a slatted build inspired by tulips.Suggested by Bill Kratz.

Shed Box of Delights: Underground beach hut

Regular readers will know that we are very keen on underground microarchitecture here at Shedworking and here's a jolly example of the genre put together by inventor and film-maker Colin Furze. He has also worked on an underground bunker in his back garden. --------------------------------------------------------

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Underground shedroom

Continuing our look at underground shedlike atmospheres, here is one sent in by @Ste_Pee from Twitter who calls it his shedroom.

@shedworking My shed isn't exactly underground but does have ground over it & is invisible on google earth. #shedroom twitter.com/Ste_Pee/status…
— Ste P. (@Ste_Pee) June 4, 2012

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Underground shedworking

We're suckers for underground microarchitecture here at Shedworking so were intrigued to chat with Neil Lankford from earthmovesdesign about the underground 'Hobbit hole' which he is building for Jimmy's Farm. It is still at the early build stages but here is the design above, designed so that it blends into the landscape and - here's the best bit - you can run up onto the top of the roof from the ground. We'll bring you more pictures when it's all finished.
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Garden office underground

We're suckers for two features of garden offices in particular at Shedworking HQ, ones that rotate and ones that are underground. Here's a marvellous design from Brazilian designer Igor Leal (more images at his Instagram page) - the garden office is buried into the garden and accessed via a staircase, but in a twist, it's the front not the back garden so putting it underground gives you all the advantages of shedworking without altering the look of the front of the house.

It's 44m2 and includes a kitchen, lavatory (which makes use of an outside system of catching rainwater), and outside area as well as a work area. It's a timber, concrete block, and aluminium build, with the garden lawn doubling up as the roof of the garden office.

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Slightly underground garden office for an illustrator

A marvellous garden office in London by Shacklewell Architects for illustrator Ann Kronheimer who became a shedworker after working from a small room in her flat. This also underlines that you don't have to own an enormous garden to build a garden studio. Regular readers of Shedworking know that the staff is particularly interested in underground garden offices and this is an example in action with a floor level deliberately designed to be sunk lower than the garden - it means the top of Ann's desk inside is the same height as the garden outside.

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'Footprint' Garden Office: underground shedworking

An intriguing theoretical design for a garden office from Nick Fisher who says it is designed to "question an ever expanding commuter culture and raise awareness of the environmental impact of urbanisation, offering a practical and sustainable means of working from home". It's the nearest we've seen to underground shedworking as it is partly submerged and uses a cardboard composite as its main component.

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Underground garden office

Though not exactly sweeping the nation, there are more underground garden offices than you might imagine. Here's a particularly fine example by Trew Turner and Bea Heslop in Haringey, London (the link has some great images of the building work in progress) where the building is half-buried and the roof used as a garden. It is a blockwork build with a Wayney edge Oak board exterior and here's what the designers say about it all:

"The green roof drains using a modern system and fills a large water butt that can be used via a tap into the Belfast sink. Additional rainwater trickles through the French Drains around the building and works its way into the double sump pump system. The bi-fold doors open to enlarge the space and make for a great work environment when the client is restoring furniture. Rooflights shine into the studio and make sure it's never a gloomy space, despite being part basement."

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Underground garden office

I was asked the following question on the Twitter yesterday so put out a call for help for anybody working in partially underground garden offices...

@shedworking Hey, I'm considering a garden office of some kind but looking to bury it in the ground so it's almost unnoticeable from above.

— Will Simpson (@willfilmmaker) May 31, 2012

I had several chats with people about Anderson Shelters but the likeliest response came from Robert Morrison who is building the garden office pictured above and below for a client in London later in the year. We will bring you more details of the build once it happens, probably around September. But an interesting early point - rather unusually, as Robert points out, the build will take place in front of the house, not at the back... ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Straw Bale Shed

Shedworking is a big fan of using straw in a shed build and Uncle Wilco at Shedblog highlights a particular good example of this at readersheds.co.uk where you can find plenty more images. It was built by James Dexter from Norwich who comments:

"May be extended underground at some point to start subterranean 'base'...actually I would be interested to hear if anyone has used their shed as a starting point to dig underground. If the shed is conceived as a 'retreat', then it seems to me that psychologically the next step is to with"draw secretively into the earth itself. No?"

Underground studio in the woods

Regular readers of Shedworking will know that the staff has a penchant for underground builds. Here is a marvellous one in Veneto, Italy, from architects Traverso Vighy, which they call the Bosco Retreat. The 9-square-metre build in the Berici Hills near Vicenza is used as a small studio for reading and stargazing. According to Giovanni Traverso from Studio Traverso-Vighy:

"The main idea was to leave the surrounding woodland completely untouched and to construct a nice room with sufficient illumination provided by natural light in the wintertime and enough shade during the summer. The dwelling is rather small, but the light and the tall windows convey the feeling of a larger space where you can really feel immersed in nature. The big window frames look as though they're dug into the ground - the glass reaches the surface of the soil - and the view of the leaves conveys the impression the tree is actually inside the room."

Lots more images of it at their site here.

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Semi-underground garden office design

We're always on the lookout for two kind of garden office designs in particular here on Shedworking, garden offices that rotate or are built underground. Here is one for the latter file from London-based Shape Architecture. Here's how they describe it:

The entrance to the office pavilion would be north-facing. Sketches of the idea developed a space with a high ceiling height supplemented with a lowered subterranean entrance. At the front would be a series of large windows that look back up the garden; ventilated at the top; which would allow lots of natural light in as well as views across the garden. There would also be a feature staircase to a glass panelled mezzanine level which could be used for meetings and offers another perspective and experience. This mezzanine level would be supported on one corner with a slanted column.

It also features a green sedum roof, long skylight, and a cantilevered desk at the ground floor on the same level as the garden which would be marvellous. Looking forward to seeing how this one works out beyond the drawing board. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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