Minimalist shedworking: satellite dish gazebo

Gazebo made from recycled satellite dish. This piece was meant to be a statement about the fad-like addiction to technology, without considering all the ramifications and the waste component, that we as humans seem especially vulnerable to.

By Stephen Fitzgerald via materialicious
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Garden offices beating the snow

Despite the wintry weather, garden office building continues apace. Here are two builds which we've been tweeting about a lot over recent weeks but not really covered on this site. Right at the top is Daryl Willcox's new garden office, just about to have its second fit electrics and then be decorated, while underneath is Triston Wallace's which is now all ready to go.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Create energy, create space, go solar with energyspace solar garden buildings. Click here for more details

How shedworking can help the NHS

The beauty of a garden office is that it can be put to a wide range of uses. The Garden Escape has been working at Barnet Hospital to install a new patient relative room: it has a green roof and sun pipe lighting to bring plenty of natural light into the building. Here's what Garden Escape say about it:

"The aim of the building is to provide a restful retreat for relatives and friends spending long hours at the hospital, with someone who is approaching the end of their life. The Garden Escape successfully linked the new garden room to the existing hospital in the courtyard."

Matron Sue Hall, Project Leader, said: "Whilst Barnet Hospital is a lovely modern building, there really isn't anywhere for families or friends to go for a bit of a rest from long hours spent at the bedside. We wanted to create somewhere very special, but private and peaceful. We've been really touched by the generosity of people who have helped us achieve so much already."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all your home and garden needs visit B&Q.
Making it easier.

Indestructible shedworking: Vostok Cabin

This mobile - and indestructible - shedlike atmosphere made of recycled steel plates from boats comes from Atelier Van Lieshout and would be ideal for all those shedworkers anticipating the imminent end of the world. It's on display at the Cite de la Science in Paris until next March.
Via dezeen

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday posts are sponsored by Extraspace, the flat-packed, man-portable expandable garden building experts. Click here for more details

STOP THE CLOCK: shedworkers

STOP THE CLOCK designs and prints hand finished greeting cards, unique wedding stationery and vibrant prints. It is run by textile graduates Kathy Slatter and Erin Taylor from their studio/shed in their back garden in Hyde, Cheshire. Here's what Kathy says about their experience: "We started off at the kitchen table with a computer but then I realised the shed in my parents’ garden would make the perfect office-cum-studio for us. This was actually the only way we could afford to set up our card company. It was only used for storage until we took it over, plus it was free whereas the rent on an office space would have prevented us from starting a business at all."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday posts are sponsored by Extraspace, the flat-packed, man-portable expandable garden building experts. Click here for more details

Beach Hut Advent Calendar 2010: highlights so far

A few of our favourite huts from this year's beach hut advent calendar down in Brighton & Hove.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed

Shedworkers contribute £6.1BN to the UK economy

Garden office-based businesses contributed an estimated £6.1 BN to UK GDP in the last year, according to research carried out by Shedworking.co.uk.

We know that Britain’s back gardens are home to a thriving and, to date, unmeasured sector of the UK economy which is exactly why we carried out a national poll last month in collaboration with award-winning PR and strategic communications consultancy Twelve Thirty Eighty and discovered that the average turnover of a shed-based business in the last financial year was £76,449.

An estimated 80,000 workers are thought to be based in garden sheds and outbuildings in the UK, although the figure could be much higher. More than half of shed-based businesses (61.3%) are run by sole traders, with 32.3% employing 2-5 workers.

There is also evidence that the shedworking economy is growing at a rate that dwarfs growth in more conventional business locations. More than one in five shedworkers (21.3%) expect their businesses to grow by more than 20% this year. Earlier this year Screwfix, the retailer of tools and building materials to the trade, reported that there are now more sheds than houses in the UK, based on analysis of Google maps.

The shed economy is sure to soar over the next decade. We’re witnessing yet another major change in working practices in Britain, similar to those we have seen over many centuries. Britain’s back gardens may become as revolutionary as the industrial canal system, sitting behind our urban and suburban frontages and powering our economy in previously unimagined ways.

And there is little sign that shedworkers see their environment as a precursor to a move to larger offices. Of the more than 500 shedworkers polled for the study, 74% said that they planned to remain in their sheds indefinitely.

Image: Peter Bestel 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday posts are sponsored by Atelier garden studios which are sustainable, stylish, flexible, functional and future proofed