Thursday, February 26, 2015

Vittra School Brotorp: Interior shedworking for children


Rosan Bosch's new design for a school in Stockholm features a variety of interesting learning spaces and what they describe as "small niches for concentration and contemplation" including these marvellous shedlike structures pictured above.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Perfect Commute: Show Garden for Malvern Spring Festival 2015





Almost certainly the most shedworkingy of this year's show gardens will be The Perfect Commute, designed by Deborah Bird from Beholder's Eye at this year's Malvern Spring Festival. Here's how she described what looks like a must-see garden specially for Shedworking readers:

"The Perfect Commute is being created for a designer who runs a consultancy from their home. They have allocated a space at the end of their garden for their working area. The design is to be imagined as part of a larger space, sectioned off with a low boundary to demarcate the area from the rest of the domestic garden.  It has a sheltered indoor working area in the form of a building being supplied by The Posh Shed Company.  This is mirrored by a sunken seating area for relaxing and meeting clients.  The garden is bounded by Jacksons Venetian fencing, sat on top of steel gabions which will be backed with natural materials.

"A focal point of the design will be a metalwork sculpture by Paul Margetts, a sculptor from Worcestershire. This piece is called ‘Focus’ and will be positioned in a raised bed and surrounded by multi-stem birch trees and soft planting. Throughout the design, planting has been chosen for year-round structure with an emphasis on spring/summer flowering specimens for the show.

"The design was inspired by a desire to minimize the daily commute, an escape from rush hour queues and the encasement of fluorescently lit office blocks. (Truth be told, it’s me building my own personal fantasy)."

Inspiration for some of the design elements is detailed on a Pinterest page set up by Deborah and she will be writing a blog during the build and run up to the show.  The garden also has a twitter page @perfect_commute

I know there are many of you who like a full breakdown of garden details so here it is:


Designer:
Deborah Bird, Beholder's Eye, Birmingham, 07931 728 007, beholders_eye@outlook.com
Diploma in Garden Design (Pickard School of Garden Design) | MA in Garden Design (Staffordshire University)
Previous awards: 2 x Bronze Medals at Malvern Autumns Shows; 2 x Silver Medals at Malvern Spring Shows and one ‘Best Border in Show’

Sponsors:
The Posh Shed Company, Eardisland, Herefordshire
Paul Margetts Sculpture and Metal-Work, Belbroughton, Worcestershire
Jacksons Fencing, Ashford, Kent
Nature First, Down Hatherley, Gloucester ----------------------------------------------------
Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Lunapods: transparent shedworking




Although squarely aimed at the glamping market, there's no reason why Lunapods should not make great garden offices (as long as you don't mind losing a little bit of privacy). The inflatable transparent bubble design (rather reminiscent of Bubbletree) is 4m diameter plus a 2m porch (including a kind of airlock mechanism for anybody who's ever dreamed about working in space), the whole thing inflated using a special silent pump to ensure fresh air and no condensation. Ballast and velcro straps prevent the wind blowing your shedlike atmosphere away.
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Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, February 23, 2015

Garden office calling home


We've covered Paul Hurst's clever Fibonacci garden office elsewhere on Shedworking so were delighted to hear from Paul about how he has been settling in.

"The building is working really well," he says, " and I have just set up a pair of Swedish Army field telephones - via fleabay - to communicate with the house. Each has a magneto to ring the bell at the other end, and standard D cell battery to power the handsets. Being a muso I've used normal 1/4 jack plugs and sockets (Les Paul guitar repro) to connect at each end, with plenty of spare cable to move the 'phones around at each end - got bthe idea from the old telephone exchanges." --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Bookshed


Nottingham-based Gillian James runs her online secondhand book business from her wooden shed in the back garden of her home where she keeps her stock of around 10,000 books (with an emphasis on children's books). You can catch up with her on Twitter.



Nottingham Evening Post (clink link to read an interview with Gillian). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, February 16, 2015

Tiny House Nation series


Shedworkers will be interested in this US series which has now transferred to UK television about tiny house building. According to the producers of Tiny House Nation (which airs at 9pm on Wednesdays on More4 but is also available via their on demand thingy) it is "about ingenious small dwelling spaces and the inventive people who live in them, helping individuals, couples and families to design and construct their own new mini-dream abodes". Well worth a watch. --------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Tweeting Tardis Loo


It's not technically a garden office but the Tweeting Tardis Loo is certainly shedlike and when the Shedworking staff saw it, we felt nostalgic for our series of Thursday Outhouses a few years ago. Designed by homeworker Jason Kneen it has everything you'd look for in a police box-themed lavatory and moreover is insulated. And it tweets when somebody opens the door, the lights come on, or there's a sunset.
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Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Sarah Walker: shedworker

Those of you who listen regularly to BBC Radio 3 will recognise Sarah Walker's voice (heard most frequently weekday mornings on Essential Classics). She is also a shedworker, as she explains in the video above, filmed in her shed. ----------------------------------------------------
Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Converted trailer garden office





A lovely converted trailer, designed and built by architect Karel Verstraeten in Ghent, which had been a temporary mobile office and is now a permanent mobile one. Features include oak strip cladding and a marvellous domed window, while inside there is a curvy plywood interior. The clever interior design means you can add shelves, desks or indeed beds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, February 09, 2015

Helen Day: Shedworker



One of my favourite sites on the interwebs is Helen Day's Ladybird Fly Away Home which is entirely devoted to the marvels that are Ladybird books (if you read them as a child you really must nip along and take a look, follow her on Twitter where she regularly tweets Ladybird artwork, and also at Helen's blog). Happily, Helen runs the site from her shed, as she explains for Shedworking:

"My husband doesn’t have a shed. In an act of supreme self-sacrifice he let me have our big, beautiful shed to house my Ladybird Book collection once it had outgrown the house. My collection is vast and keeps me busy in a number of ways; I write a blog, a website and use Twitter to spread the Ladybird-Word. I contribute to TV and radio programmes, books, articles and exhibitions on the subject and sell some of my swaps so for all of these reason I spend a great deal of time in my shed, organising, researching and writing about my books (or ‘playing’, my husband would say).


"We acquired the shed second-hand from our local garden centre. The price was affordable because we had to dismantle it, transport it and reassemble in the garden. Husband lavished time and effort on insulating, ventilating, heating and wiring and in a short time it became my favourite place to work.  There’s something about the light and space and smell of wood and proximity to the garden. Though sparcely furnished, the books take the edge off the echos. It is never too hot in summer and in winter we heat it just enough to be able to protect the books from extreme cold. 

"I don’t know if husband regrets his act of generosity, but I rather suspect he does."

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

Thursday, February 05, 2015

Cantilevered shipping container garden office



Nice piece on designboom about architect Patrick Bradley's new shipping container office, designed and built in collaboration with Thornton Modular which specialises in turning shipping containers into a range of sizes suitable for working and living in (Bradley's is a TO45 model). Grand Designs fans will have seen their work on an episode aired last year (more details here).

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Amy Trevaskus: shedworker

Find out more about writer Amy Trevaskus, who has just become a shedworker, at her website. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Monday, February 02, 2015

Garden office of the future




Shedworkers will be intrigued by the winning entries in the Metropolis Magazine competition to design the workspace of the future. Several of the shortlisted finalists' designs have distinctly shedlike elements to them (especially the Cell, see below), with the winning entry coming from UK-based interior designers Sean Cassidy and Joe Wilson.

According to Metropolist, their Organic Grid+ design (above) "flipped the basic open-office layout on its head by putting the employee’s well-being at the forefront, while also addressing ergonomics and sustainability in one concise plan" - their simple yet radical idea was to come up with an office which employees liked being in. Lots more details at Metropolis.

We were also intrigued by the various shedworkingesque features of Edward Ogosta's Hybrid Office which was in the runners-up spot...

and by Studiopant's The Cell, an on-the-move shedworking idea.

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