Mirrored beach hut

A shedworkingesque thing of beauty on Worthing beach, a mirrored beach hut designed by ECE Architecture. Although it's an art installation put together with Mark Sephton from Creative Forager it would also make a great design for a garden office, like this one in Amsterdam. Here's what ECE say about it:

"It took a team of ECE staff six weeks to design and build the hut to typical Worthing beach hut specifications. They used laser-cut mirrored acrylic sheets applied to wooden panels finished with dark grey shadow gaps. The mirrored acrylic was affixed just hours before joining it all together at 4am on Saturday morning."

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Friday Finery: Mirrored beach huts

You've got until June 30 to catch the three marvellous mirrored beach huts on show at the Worthing Fringe Festival. The  'A piECE of our Mind' installations is built by ECE Architecture, this is what they say about them:

The three miniature mirrored beach huts are playful, creative and deliberately rooted in place; designed to celebrate Worthing, spark curiosity, and invite people to see the town through a different lens. As they move across locations throughout June, they encourage residents and visitors alike to explore, pause, connect and take pride in their surroundings. 

The moveable huts were made with locally sourced materials including from Covers Timber & Builders Merchants in Bognor Regis, and will be auctioned for charity at the end of the month.

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Mirrored garden office for sale

Our list of favourite garden office features includes a semi-underground build, ability to revolve, and room for a cider press. But that list also includes mirrored exterior and you now have a chance to buy your very own. 

Knight Frank is marketing a property in Surey (between Wotton-under-Edge and Tetbury) called The Round House. It's of major architectural importance, contains a world class music recording studio, seven bedrooms, and numerous outbuildings, among them in the garden a mirrored annexe - pictured above - which has been built into the side of a slope. The studio also comes with an en-suite shower room and attached garden store. And it can all be yours for just £5,950,000.

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Mirrored garden office

There are various ways of making your garden office blend into your garden landscape, and here's an option to consider, using mirrors (previous examples covered on Shedworking are here and also here). This one above comes courtesy of Oxfordshire-based William Green Architects who put it together as part of a larger design on a Grade II listed property in a Northamptonshire village. Here's what they say about it:

"This mirrored garden office designed by our team becomes almost invisible within its surroundings. A garden office can be eco-friendly, ergonomically designed to either be a modern statement or hidden within the grounds and can provide all the space you require."

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Architects' mirrored garden office

Another magnificent addition to the mirrored garden office folder, a garden office for an architectural practice in Beaufays, Liège, Belgium, from architects MIA. The timber frame is clad in reflective cladding which works particularly well in the lightly forested location, the windows hidden behind translucent glass. Lots more marvellous photos at the link above.

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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

 

Mirrored shed

 

A fabulous mirrored shedworking atmosphere (ok, it's a lookout point), the work of Strathclyde University architecture students Angus Ritchie and Daniel Tyler in Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. More details and photos at Dezeen. Photos by Ross Campbell. ----------------------------------------------------

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Garden Room by Bates Maher

A rather lovely 13sq.m garden room by architects Bates Maher (who longstanding readers will remember for their gorgeous Poustinia). This is how they describe it:

"This involved the extension to the rear of a typical terraced house creating a single space between the house and the garden, enclosing an inner courtyard. Two sliding glass screens are contained between a marble stone base and storage wall and a natural rendered wall and ceiling. The glass and mirrored screens give different views and reflections depending on position and time of day A diagonal cut in the ceiling contains the light source."

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MSPs urge Deputy First Minister to reconsider Scottish Men's Sheds funding cut

40 cross-party MSPs have signed a letter written by Liam McArthur MSP (pictured and available to read rather more easily at his official site here) sent to the Deputy First Minister John Swinney asking him to rethink the decision not to award core and development funding to the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association in last month's draft budget.

"The Men’s Shed movement has been a tremendous success over recent years with the number of Sheds and ‘Shedders’ across the country continuing to grow," said Liam McArthur. "This has been mirrored in Orkney where the success of the first men's shed has now led to plans being taken forward in Sanday and most recently Westray. I know from the experience in Orkney how rewarding it has been in providing men a place to gather, work and relax. Indeed, as it has been demonstrated across the world, these facilities can make a tangible difference in efforts to tackle loneliness, social isolation and mental ill health.

"It is therefore difficult to understand why Scottish Ministers are planning to withdraw funding to the men's sheds movement altogether. Against a backdrop of soaring demand for mental health services, now more than ever we need to redouble our commitment to this invaluable public health movement.

"The Men's Shed movement has long enjoyed strong cross-party support and I'm delighted to bring this together once again in a united message of support for the SMSA. Hopefully this will prompt the Scottish Government to rethink its proposed cut and continue providing the modest level of funding that helps do so much good in Orkney and communities across Scotland."

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Harads: invisible treehouse shedworking

Now here's a way to hoodwink the planners, make your garden office invisible (as well as up in a tree). This marvellous shedlike structure - actually a very bijou hotel in Sweden - comes from Tham and Videgard Hansson. They call the 4m cube a 'shelter in the trees' and it's built out of aluminium and plywood with walls clad in mirrored glass. You'll be relieved to know that there are special stickers which only birds can see to prevent them whacking into the sides.Via Trendhunter
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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 ----------------------------------------------------

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Garden office hair & beauty salon: case study

 

 

It's always nice to report on shedworkers in action and here's a fine example of an increasingly popular way of using a garden office in a contemporary log garden office from Norwegian Log. It's owned by Diane Cox, a Reading-based hairdresser who wanted to change the way she ran her business and indeed way of life. After years of renting premises on a busy main road with a lack of parking for her customers she decided to opt for a stylish hair salon in her back garden and add an asset which will be more cost effective than being tied into a long-term rental agreement.

Diane’s garden room office salon includes three cutting chairs plus mirrored workstations, a washing basin, a lavatory for customers, manicure table and a small waiting area with lots of storage, all just yards from her back door. This enabled Diane to cut costs on a salon premises and still have plenty of storage space for her stock and customers. 

“Our customers walk around the corner and say ‘wow’," says Diane. "They like the quietness of its location and how calm it is. We also have so much natural light which is perfect for colouring hair. My salon was on the main road before, so there was a lot of noise and cars."

The interior walls of the contemporary garden office have been treated with a pale tinted natural oil to ensure Diane was able to see the natural wood to achieve a shabby chic look and feel. Log’s natural insulation also means that outdoor log offices are airtight, avoiding leaks and condensation which can increase the costs associated with heating up and cooling down brick and mortar buildings. An air conditioning unit has been installed in Diane’s log cabin garden office to ensure customers are cool and comfortable due to the constant heat from hairdryers in hair salons. Measuring 30m2 and measuring under 2.5m high, the garden office needed no planning permission. 

“It’s so relaxing here and the ladies love it," says Diane. "It’s a completely different, calming environment.”
 
Norwegian Log have a Garden Room calculator that you can use for free to experiment with which garden building might be good for you. 

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Box of Delights - Ullmayer Sylvester Summerhouse

This lovely north London shedworking atmosphere is called The New Summerhouse and was put together by Turner Castle in collaboration with Ullmayer Sylvester Architects who designed it. It's used as an art studio, playroom, tool shed and even kitchen. It has a steel frame but is otherwise wood, clad in birch-faced plywood and also has a particularly nice stainless steel mirrored wall, pictured below.


Via Remodelista

Hairdressing and beauty therapy garden office

Hairdresser Diane Cox who runs Femininity Hair & Beauty in Reading took the leap to shedworking after the 15 year lease on her salon was due for renewal and opted instead for a Norwegian Log cabin in her back garden. It's a good size (it has to be to fit in cutting chairs, mirrored workstations, washing basins, lavatory, storage, and waiting area), coming in at 30m². Features include plenty of windows to bring light into the space, and a bi-fold door. Inside, the walls have been treated with a pale tinted natural oil. Not only is it the perfect size, it's also much quieter than the business's previous location on a main road in the city.

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

Watch Your Eyes

Behind the young lady wearing a Proenza Schouler silver-and-black beaded silk organza jumpsuit, shoes and sunglasses is Elliott Coon's mirrored-house installation called "Watch Your Eyes", one of the finest reflecting shedlike atmospheres we've ever seen.

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Amsterdam mirror shedworking

A spectacular shedlike atmosphere in the Watergraafsmeer district of Amsterdam, designed by cc-studio for Maarten - who as director of the augmentedreality start-up company Layar often works in the garden office - and Lori Lens-FitzGerald in Watergraafsmee. Here's what cc-studio say about it:

By placing mirrored planes the visual depth of the garden was enhanced to look deeper. Also the geometry of the volume was specially tailored to play with the perspective lines and to have no vertical surfaces parallel to the house but at an angle to have a more continuous flow.

It has a lovely sedum roof on the angular roof, built to avoid a box shape, and windows are half-hidden from direct sight (which is good as it is also used as a guest room as well as a garden office). cc-studio say that the vapour permeable cellulose insulation and gypsum plastered walls "create within the critically small space an agreeable indoor climate temperature and healthy air".

Via archdaily----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Bathing Beauties - winners and weekend

We've been covering the marvellous Bathing Beauties for several months here at Shedworking. You'll find pictures of the winners below but you should also make a beeline for Mablethorpe and Sutton on Sea this weekend (September 22-23) where the longest linear arts festival in the world - the Bathing Beauties Festival (poster pictured above) - will be held in beach huts along the seashore - poetry, fireworks, storytelling, music, drama, guided tours, and much more. Click here for more information. You'll also be able to see the winning huts in the flesh and even book them for daily summer hire in 2008.

So, the winners of the main competition were:
> Atelier NU, Montreal (Quebec), for 'Halcyon Beach Hut' built with plexiglass and western red cedar

> Feix&Merlin, London, for 'Eyes Wide sHut', a'picture frame' hut with two ornate hand crafted timber frames and floor to ceiling dark tinted mirrored panels

> 'i-am' associates, London, for 'Jabba', the world's first contemporary cave, made from cedar wood, glass and colour anodised aluminium as sedimentary layers.

> we made that, London, for 'A Hut for Gazing and Canoodling' an inconspicuous black hideaway with a lush interior (to be installed in 2008).

I also liked the winner of the Best Scale ModelT by hurgood Hobson Design, London, for their model 'Lazy Susan' inspired by the Airstream caravan and which is designed to rotate to follow the sun.


The beach huts will be the property of East Lindsey District Council, will be officially opened for public view on 22 & 23 Sept 2007, when advance bookings will be taken for daily public hire for 2008. More details including a full list of winners and pictures at the Bathing Beauties site here.

How to landscape your garden office

There's a useful new guide to planning and landscaping your new garden office build at the Garden Affairs site. It includes a quick rundown on subjects such as size, base, planting, paths, roof planting, and mirrored glass. Here's a snippet:

When you’re deciding on the ideal size, try staking out the area with some markers and string. This way, you’ll get a good idea of the footprint, and whether the building will fit well in the position you’ve chosen. Maybe you’ll discover it needs to be bigger, to fill the space and create better balance, or smaller because otherwise it would dwarf its surroundings. Another tip is to mark out the size of any equipment you want to put in your building - desks, sofas etc. This will really give you a clear picture of how the space is going to accommodate what you need.

You can read the whole post here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Sun Rain Rooms

It's a rule on this site that we don't cover extensions on the simple basis that they're not sheds or even shedlike. But we're in a quandry about the multi-award-winning Sun Rain Rooms from architects tonkin liu which genuinely seems to be the first shed-extension crossover we've come across. Here's what they say about it:

Under the roof a garden room offers a living space for the home and a meeting space for the studio. A mirrored wall in the covered outdoor area beyond conceals a workshop, cooking area, potting shed, store, and deep planter for the small trees in the green roof above.

It's the work of Anna Liu and Mike Tonkin who spent 12 years on it as a working from home project at townhouse. It's certainly an extension, but there is also certainly a shedworkingesque element included as the images above indicate, with chairs and tables around an outside pool. Here's a bit more of what they say about it:

The perimeter walls of the rear courtyard support a plywood roof, curved in plan and section to allow maximum light into a patio garden. Rainwater gathered at the top of the townhouse falls through a pipe, following the roof’s curving leading edge to a spout over a long rainwater harvesting tank. The tank floods the patio at the push of a button, transforming it into a reflecting pool. The roof’s thin 110mm structural shell is an insulated stressed-skin, joined by round coffered skylights that echo the wave pattern of raindrops landing in the pool. It is a good place to be on a bad day.

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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