Shedworking
The Alternative Workplace Revolution

Shedworking is an inspirational illustrated handbook which no shedowner will want to be without. The book features shedworkers and shedbuilders from around the world who are leading the alternative workplace revolution, and looks at why shedworking is a greener way of working, improves work-life balance and accelerates your productivity. It is inspired by the author's Shedworking website which has been internationally acclaimed for the groundbreaking scale of its architectural coverage, featuring many previously unpublished images of garden offices and shedlike atmospheres, offices on roofs, sheds inside 'traditional' offices and on wheels, as well as cutting edge Le Corbusier designed models for the back garden, all-glass shed offices and buildings 'built' using living trees. Along the way it offers a whistle-stop tour of famous sheds from Pliny the Younger's summerhouse and the composing retreats of nineteenth century composers Grieg and Mahler to award-winning twenty-first century fantasy writer Neil Gaiman's gazebo. In short, Shedworking offers a manifesto for those wanting to change their working lives for the better and go to work in the garden.

To watch a video for an introduction to shedworking click here"target=_blank">here

To watch a video for showing famous shedworking click here"target=_blank">here

Introduction

Historic Sheds

Best Sheds

Build Your Own

At Work in the Shed

The Green Shedworker

Beyond the Garden Office

The Future of Shedworking

Appendices

Further info

[unedited text]



Our offices define us: they dictate where we live, who we see, how we feel. We are where we work. And where we work is changing. We are coming home.



'Shedworking' is the term which I came up with in 2005 when I started publishing The Shed magazine for people who work in sheds and shedlike atmospheres to cater for the growing numbers of people working from home in garden offices, small 'shedlike' buildings in unused space in their back gardens. Over the last decade we have seen the evolution of the office workplace. A small shed which once only housed lawnmowers and pots can now be insulated from the cold, fitted with its own electrics, and can link you to anywhere in the world: Andrew Bolger of the Financial Times describes how “a burgeoning breed of 'techno-commuters' is using fast, newly affordable broadband connections to hold down city jobs without sacrificing rural isolation", citing a former investment banker who runs an online business information service about the Russian aerospace industry from the Hebridean island of Tiree. The famous shedworkers who have attracted the most attention are artists and writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Roald Dahl, Henry Thoreau and Henry Moore. But nowadays you're just as likely to find accountants at the bottom of the garden as you are sculptors: Peter Smith runs his successful media law practice from a Scandinavian-style wooden shed in his garden in Strathpeffer in the Highlands of Scotland while a recent Chelsea Flower Show show garden included a garden office specifically for a shedworking solicitor.