Shedworking in a hobbit hole

Wooden Wonders have the only garden office officially affiliated to Middle Earth Enterprises. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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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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Shipping container garden office

After a huge flurry of interest a couple of years ago in using shipping containers as buildings/building blocks, the excitement seems to have died down a little. However, we rather like this charming design by Shane Peterson who - using 3D Studio Max 2012, Vray and Photoshop - has turned a standard 20′ steel shipping container into a garden office which could be put together off site and then delivered to a home. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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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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Shedworking taking off in Los Angeles

Are garden offices finally reaching a tipping point in the USA? An interesting article by Lisa Boone in the Los Angeles Times looks at several examples (including The Office actor Rainn Wilson's designed by Make Architecture, pictured above) and says that "At a time when so many people are bringing the office home, there’s a growing desire for more separation, physical and psychological, between work and personal life." But here's the really interesting paragraph:

At a home tour organized by the American Institute of Architects’ Los Angeles chapter last month, three out of the five homes had a detached office. It’s an increasingly common solution for L.A.’s creative class, which does include the architects themselves. “Architects are very happy about this solution as they reduce overheard costs and have the opportunity to spend more time with their family,” said Carlo Caccavale, associate director of the Los Angeles AIA. For many, an office located at home but not in the home is proving to be the best way to reconcile work life with family life.

Also mentioned in the article is artist Janie Geiser , pictured below, who works in a 1955 Airfloat Land Yacht at her home.

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Aaron Cook: shedworker

Taekwondo under 80kg world number one Aaron Cook, currently engaged in a bizarre bid to actually be included in the GB taekwondo Olympic team, is a shedworker. He has trained in the specially-designed shed built by his father at his home since the age of eight. "It was a pretty big space for an eight-year-old," he said. "It meant I was training more than anyone else my age." Here's how the Daily Mail describes it:

"The shed smells new, looks like the inside of a sauna and in one corner there are three mannequins — all called Bob — which Cook uses as targets. Each Bob wears a helmet and jacket fitted with sensors linked to a scoring pad so Cook knows if his kicks win him points."

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Homestead Timber Buidlings - Garden Rooms as used by Kirsty Allsopp

my cool shed by Jane Field-Lewis

A decade is a long time in shed books. Ten years ago, Gordon Thorburn's hugely successful book 'Men And Sheds' was published featuring an entirely male lineup of shedworkers, hobbyists and Suffragen Bishops, photographed by Laura Forrester in black and white (one per double spread), mostly unsmiling, all from the UK, and in very traditional sheds. It helped - as did the previous year's launch of readersheds.co.uk - to kickstart renewed interest in shedlike atmospheres.

Ten years on, and with Sally Coulthard's Shed Chic book in between, we now have Jane Field-Lewis's new book 'my cool shed - an inspirational guide to stylish hideaways and workspaces'. The huge number of photographs are in full colour, the sheds are from all over the world, and the sheddies are both male and female. There's even a sourcebook at the end to help you get the look as well as gorgeous endpapers (see image below). The term 'shedworking' is now used without explanation. Much has changed.

my cool shed is split into several sections looking at artists, musicians, retreats, gardeners, writers, workspaces and time out. Many of the people featured are shedworkers (indeed plenty of the 35 garden offices and sheds featured have appeared on this blog or in the Shedworking book) which underlines again how much has changed in shed useage since 2002. Each entry also has a section called 'style notes' which allows Jane - who is a professional multi-disciplinary stylist - to talk through the look of each shed with her expert eye.

Jane writes nicely and there's no pretentious gobbledygook. It's a lively read and her hard work in tracking down some marvellous sheds (I particularly like French artist Richard Texier's studio at the end of a pier) has paid off in spades. But what really makes it stand out are the several hundred photographs by Tina Hillier. She has absolutely got to grips with each of the sheds, picking out intriguing details inside as well as atmospheric exterior shots - even if you're familiar with some of these sheds, there are so many new shots of them that you won't be disappointed.

You should certainly buy my cool shed (published by Pavilion in hardback at £14.99) - not only is Jane a decent person, this will definitely be the best book about sheds published this year.

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