Garden office barn

One path which shedworking is likely to take in the future is doubling up on space in a shedlike atmosphere in the garden so that much needed extra office space sits comfortably with additional living space, maybe for older or younger family members and overnighting guests. Here's a nice example from Decorated Shed which they call the Barn: it comes with kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms with plenty of space for a really nice garden office.
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Shedworking in 2015

"I love my commute: I walk 3 metres from my back door into my garden office."

This is how an interesting article on how we'll be working in 2015 starts on Pocket-Lint. Here's a snippet:

I reach out to the cinemascope monitor, which springs into life. It's a single curved unit that presents everything in windows. It fills most of the width of my desk and would be really dominating if it wasn't transparent. The display has its own OS, acting as a bridge between anything you feed in and what you see. I just slide the windows around and bring what I want to the centre, I can zoom, send things right to the peripherals, view what ever I want. It will let me feed in more than one source, so I can be working on different platforms in the same display, which saves a load of time, and I can pull applications off those platforms to work alongside in the display. Last night's Call of Duty: Roman Warfare 2 session is still sitting paused on one side. That'll be a distraction today, for sure.

Worth a browse.
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Macquarie Sydney - One Shelley Street

This is a great example of how shedworking concepts can be used in traditional offices, using customised pod spaces to work in. You can see stills instead of the video at the Clive Wilkinson Architects site.
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Modular shedworking and living

We talk about the future of shedworking a lot here on Shedworking. And while coshedworking has been a particularly hot topic in recent months, a nice piece in today's Independent focuses on the delights of prefab and reminds us how it can further the cause of live-work spaces. Although it mentions familiar names such as ecospace and ecohab, it also features Cub which come from Cube Housing Solutions designed by Charlie Greig. Here's a snippet:

"She hopes that one day her design will appeal to a mass market and sit neatly among traditional Victorian and Edwardian terraces... The Cub’s smart interior comes as a pleasant surprise. With high ceilings and glazed frontages, even the smallest Cub at 51 square metres feels roomy."

Well worth a read.
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The office of the future - not an office

An interesting comment piece in The Times (or are we not allowed to link to them any more?) by Paul Warner, Chair of the British Council for Offices Urban Affairs Committee backs the concept of the “city as office”. As he says:

In future, companies will downsize the footprint of their property and make use of city-centre facilities that are publicly available — coffee shops, restaurants, pubs, parks.

Which is good as far as it goes, but while Shedworking is all for third place working, it completely ignores the fact that increasing numbers of people are now (shed)working from home. Well worth a browse and I'd be keen to hear your thoughts.
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Second Skin

Here's another rather natty way of installing a shedworkingesque structure into your home, Second Skin from Renesiebum. It's basically a kind of bookcase/wardrobe which opens out into an enclosed, screened-off space. Photos by Guus Alders.

Microhouse

Another glimpse of the future of shedworking, as highlighted by Naomi Seldin at timesunion.com's Simpler Living. Designed by Northern Timbers Construction (where there are more pictures of it), the 100 square feet wood and steel building is in City Hall Park, Burlington, Vt, as part of the Human=Landscape exhibit: inside you can squeeze in a bed, chair, kitchen and bathroom. It's a nice article with good links to other pieces on small living.
Via Jetson Green

Garden room: Nagoya House

We often look at ways of bringing the garden into your garden office, but here's a particularly fabulous one at a lovely house in Nagoya designed by Suppose Design Office and showcased on the superduper dezeen who say:

"The house, situated on a narrow plot surrounded by neighbouring houses, accommodates the client’s desire for a vibrant garden by including a landscaped “garden room” bordering the main living space."

And here's what the Suppose folk say:

"It was our intention to treat rooms and gardens as equivalent, and make the relationship between inside and out closer, by creating a design featuring this garden-like room so that things normally decorating a room such as art, books, and furnishings would in a way almost be thrust into an exterior space."

Lots more photos at dezeen.

EGG workstation

The Egg is another intriguing idea which looks at how shedworking could be adapted into a more traditional workplace situation. It's a modular workstation from Joe Buenazedacruz which aims to give the sheddishworker enough privacy to work while giving them the chance to collaborate with nearby folk too. It's made from composition boards and fibreglass, giving it a soft shape that is seldom seen in existing workstations and cubicles.
Via the design blog

House of Furniture Parts

Our Future of Shedworking folder is starting to bulge a bit: here's The House of Furniture Parts by Studio Makkink & Bey. This shedlike atmosphere is made from plywood and has furniture embedded in the walls which you just extract as and when the need arises. When you don't want it, it packs away flat, so you can use it as moveable shedworking space within a 'traditional' office environment or indeed your home.
Via MoCo Loco with more details at Droog.
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The ROOM

Another entry for the Future of Shedworking, here is The ROOM by ODA. Here's how they describe it.

The ROOM by Office for Design & Architecture is a modular dwelling system intended to be retrofitted into existing spaces. Designed to be and adjustable yet tailored solution for bedrooms, The ROOM consists of three elements: the Pod, the Media Station and the Satellite. The appearance and arrangement can be adjusted to fit within rooms of all sizes and for users of all ages. It is also made affordable by the use of simple materials and construction methods that can be dressed up or down according to budget.

MoCo Loco say that the design started life as a custom project for a client who wanted a "room" for a teenager in a loft-like space.

Future of shedworking: Naked House + Micro Home

Two very different views of how shedworking is already being taken to the next level. Above, the Naked House by architects Shigeru Ban (Photo: Hiroyuki Hirai), which consists of wooden cubes on wheels which you can move around as you wish. Below, Walter Barrett's Micro Home which crams lots of home into a nice shedlike atmosphere.Via Judit Bellostes and Tiny House Blog where there are lots more photos and details.

Cuberotate

With echoes of the m-ch, Jan Sturm's intriguing Cuberotate focuses on the idea of a house being made up of little cubes, each with wellinsulated wooden walls, pretty much self-sufficient in terms of energy with its photovoltaic panels. It has folding and pull-out furniture so the whole thing become a multi-tasking live-work atmsophere. And if you want to change your views, you can rotate the whole darn thing by hand like George Bernard Shaw's garden office, one of Shedworking's pet loves.
Via Judit Bellostes
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BrightBuilt Barn

The BrightBuilt Barn is a very interesting exercise in the future of shedworking, combining as it does a studio space with the potential to turn it into something more residential. Essentially, it's a very eco-friendly build (selfsufficient for heat and energy, excellent insulation, and so on - more on this at the excellent Electronic House site) built by Kaplan Thompson for owners Keith and Mary Collins who intend to use it as an art studio, workshop for metals and electronics and office space. Its moveable partitions also mean it can be fiddled with to turn it into a house with a couple of bedrooms. It's a fascinating project which you can follow at its blog and wiki.
Thanks to Fiona Gilsenan for the alert

Fluid Habitation - Andrew Maynard

Andrew Maynard's rather nice Tattoo House extension is doing a virtual lap of honour around the interweb at the moment (I particularly like the garden-type window UV stickers - scroll down to the end of the post for a photo). But he also has some interesting thoughts about homeworking and I like the look of the shedlike Fluid Habitation pictured above."There is a contemporary shift in architecture toward the fluid, toward the impermanent, toward the adaptable," says Maynard. "These impermanent spaces are empowering by their very nature. Impermanency is proactive, subversive and empowering to the individual." He continues:

"The modern home does not reflect our modern life style in many ways. Our life consists of dynamic systems of media, information, technology and transport. These elements continually shape our epoch and define it as an era of loose foundations and shifting meaning. Our homes do not reflect this. They contain a variety of products that enhance our lifestyle through their flexibility, fluidity and malleability. Yet our direct living environment remains a static one. Fixed and rigid, it conforms us to a static ideology and does not allow us to easily adapt and evolve our behaviour, relationships, circumstances and lifestyle."

And so his suggestions is fluid habitation, which allows people to reinvent their living space and turn it into a truly bespoke home. So as well as wellknown devices such as intelligent glass, Maynard has come up with the idea of not only a mobile bedroom, but also a mobile office. Here's how he describes it:

"The mobile office is a flexible office space providing the family with a simple and adaptable environment to work and study. The mobile office is a hybrid structure, incorporating an adaptable, tectonic solution with contemporary screen technology. The office is a digitised 'jack' to the world, providing the family with a contemporary means and expression of their connection to the world and their freedom to information. One could imagine that as the make up of the family changes over time that simple, free standing elements such as the mobile office could be added to suit the shifting needs of the family."

Well worth a browse.

Le Cabanon - the future of shedworking

A lovely little structure and very much the future of shedworking by Cyril Brulé of atelier Correia called Le Cabanon in Villiers-en-Morvan, France: it's just 20m2 and Cyril lives and works in it. The Cabanon has all kinds of nice elements - Northern Fir siding, duck feather insulation, an interior lined with formaldehyde-free OSB panels; a rubber floor and an Ikea kitchen.
Via shed champion Justin at materialicious where you'll find lots more interesting pictures including this one below of the interior.

N55's walking (shed)house

How would you like a shedlike atmosphere which walks? Those inventive folk at N55 have indeed been working on just such a prototype design in a project for the Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire. Inspired by gypsy caravans, the Walking House is a modular dwelling system which allows you to shedwork (or indeed live) nomadically with little environmental impact: energy is collected via solar cells and small windmills and a small greenhouse module can be added. And not only can it collect rainwater, it's amphibious. The framework is made of steel, aluminium or wood with windows of polycarbonate.I'm not entirely sure about the next bit: there are six legs and they can be worked so that while it moves (slowly, at the pace of a human step), three legs are on the ground at the same time. The idea is a collaboration with a group of travellers in the Cambridge area. Here's what N55 say:

"The Walking House requires no permanent use of land and thereby challenges ownership of land and suggests that all land should be accessible for all persons. Society could administrate rights to use land for various forms of production of food for example, but ownership of land should be abolished.
N55 furthermore suggest that WALKING HOUSES should be owned by all persons in common and used by the persons wanting to live in them."

Portable Globe House

From Science and Mechanics via the excellent Modern Mechanix blog of January 1961, this is the future of shedworking, the Portable Globe House for Well-Rounded Living, called the Kugelhaus. As writer Wayne Wille says, it is just 15ft in diameter, very convenient, and can be delivered by helicopter. He continues:

"Its eggshell-like construction is of either lightweight reinforced concrete, metal or plastic. Just one inch of concrete gives good results, says the inventor, Dr. Johann Ludowici. The house can be completely assembled in the factory—with whatever furniture or other equipment is wanted—before delivery. As portable as a house could be, it can be flown to wherever you want it by helicopter, towed in by boat (it floats), or, more conventionally, carried on a truck."

Apparently, it was commissioned by the Belgian government which wanted a comfortable low-cost small house which could be towed up rivers or flown into remote regions of Africa for use as worker housing.
Via the always intriguing Shed and Shelter

Hotel Everland

Hotel Everland would be a wonderful place for some shedworking. The design comes from Swiss installationists L/B (Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann). Essentially it's a one-room hotel/shedworking atmosphere which includes a bathroom, a double bed and a sitting room. You can only book it for one night only and it will be on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris following an exhausting world tour until the end of 2008. The site is well worth a browse, full of videos, information and a nice webcam. A book on the project is out soon.
Via the increasingly trendy Uncle Wilco at shedblog

Dystopic Horizons Realty

Is this the future of shedworking? Dystopic Horizons Realty provide what they call 'affordable "near loft" like Artist Housing' in San Francisco at unbelievably cheap prices. Here's how they describe their models:

"Each inspired live/work unit is hand-crafted, and capable of magnificent views. The loft-like Cubist floorplan allows convenient interior access and customized storage solutions. Green construction and copious natural lighting and ventilation support ecologically responsible living. It's not a cardboard house... it's a cardboard home."

They list the following as benefits:
* Cutting edge deployable architecture
* Passive heating and cooling systems
* Basic model allows for minor and major renovation options
* "Loft-like" O.I.F.P. (Open Interior Floor Plan)
* Zero financing
Pictured below are some of their operatives searching out similar shedworking atmospheres. Curbed SF has some more details here. Thanks to Liz Jones for the alert.