8 ★ FTWeekend 17 August/18 August 2019House Home
shed to a home office. What do I need
to know?The idea of being able to work from an
office in the garden is very seductive.
Imagine it — the best of both worlds: no
commute, access to home comforts and
yet the possibility of shutting up shop
and stepping away from your work at
the end of the day.
The reality, of course, is often
different. A cold and damp shed
in the middle of winter can be pretty
unappealing and a lot of the home
offices I’ve seen have ended up
being used as little more than a garden
store room.
Do not assume, either, that a
home office will necessarily addYour architect’s reasons may also
be environmental. One sqm o fa
concrete slab 100mm thick requires
around 180MJ energy and releases 27kg
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Concrete is made from three main
ingredients: water, aggregateand
cement. Cement manufacture involves
quarrying, grinding, heating, sintering,
quenching, granulating, and blending.
All these processes use energy and
produce waste. Cement alone accounts
for around 7 per cent of human-caused
carbon dioxide emissions.
Then there is the aggregate that
requires construction-grade sand
from shorelines, rivers and sea beds.
There is increasing concern that we
are using this sand faster than it cansignificantly to the value of your home.
Think about it hard, then, but if you
really want a year-round garden office,
accept that you will need to do it
properly. Unless your “garden shed” is
very grand this may well mean taking
it down and starting again, putting up a
solid, secure, heated and well-insulated
building in its place.
Proper construction needs proper
access too, which can be difficult for
terraced houses in town. You may need
planning consent although, if you are
lucky, your house may have permitted
development rights that allow you to
put up a small building (within certain
rules) without applying for permission.
Converting a garden building to an
office may not be as straightforward asit first appears, but good architects
enjoy a challenge. If you do decide to
construct an office in your garden, you
have the opportunity to build yourself
a tailored work space in beautiful
surroundings that is comfortable,
sustainable, uplifting and inspiring.
That’s a lovely design brief for an
imaginative small practice. Good luck!Tom Miller, director, Haysom Ward
Miller ArchitectsOpinions in this column are for general
information purposes only. They do not
create any architect-client relationship,
and should not be relied on as a substitute
for bespoke professional advice. The
Financial Times Ltd and the authors are
not responsible for any result of following
views or recommendations in the column,
and exclude all liability in relation to its
content to the full extent permitted by law.If you have a question for our expert panel
of UK-based architects about your
renovation, build or rebuild, please send it
to [email protected]Looking to work with an architect? Find
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http://www.architecture.com/FindAnArchitectDan MitchellI’m renovating a 1960s house and
want a polished concrete floor. Why
is my architect resisting?The lustrous sheen of a polished
concrete floor may seem seductive but
all that glisters is not gold. There are a
number of reasons that a polished
concrete floor may be inappropriate for
your project.
It may be that your house does not
have the ceiling height to
accommodate a concrete floor slab.
To achieve a polished concrete floor,
you would need a new slab around
100mm thick. This could meanyou
need to raise your floor level to fit the
new slab in or strengthen the existing
floor structure to support its weight.renew itself, leading to a global
shortage. The amount of water
required to create concrete is also
problematic. To make one sqm o fa
100mm-thick concrete slab requires
around 70l of water.
Whether or not the practical
challenges can be overcome, I would
recommend something more
environmental, such as timber.Maria Smith, founding director,
Interrobang Architecture and
EngineeringHow to convert a garden shed
I would like to commission an
architect to upgrade my gardenWhy some substances may
be inappropriate for arenovation and how to
build an office in thegarden. ByMaria Smith
andTom MillerAsk the architect
Solid
reasons
against a
concrete
floor
A lot of the home offices
I’ve seen have ended up
being used as little morethan a garden store room
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