Though it may sound like a portmanteau invented solely to infuriate, the "shoffice" is apparently a thing, and the Wall Street Journal is on it. These backyard office-sheds are catching on with a certain set of homeowning Londonites for the same reason that backyard expansions are; a deficit of space, the prohibitively high cost of moving to a bigger home, and the fact that the British planning system allows a fair amount of leeway with backyard structures—like the curving oak-lined shell that Platform 5 Architects created for a couple in St. John's Wood—as long as they take up less than 50 percent of the available space, aren't used for sleeping, and have a maximum pitched-roof height of 13 feet. Below, six more examples of handsome "shoffices."
Photo via Dezeen
↑ This backyard Writer's Shed, completed in April of 2013 and recently shortlisted for the 2014 Architects Journal Small Projects Award, was described by its designers, the firm Weston, Surman & Deane, as "a haven in the city; a fairy-tale hut" responding to their client's "passion for children's literature and mythologies."
Photo via 3rdSpace
↑ 3rdSpace is meeting the U.K.'s shoffice needs with prefabricated backyard structures that can be assembled in the week. This model, the 3 Bay Modular Library, is pictured above in the back of an Oxfordshire home.
Photo via My Modern Met
↑ Architect Erin Moore designed an off-the-grid writer's cabin called The Watershed for her mother, Oregon-based nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore, with a prefabricated steel frame and red cedar siding.
↑ The Hackney Shed by Office Sian is a low-budget, one-person workspace made from from oak and outfitted bookshelves sandwiched between structural columns.
Photo via Dezeen
↑ To create the so-called Wall of Zudaji, in Hamamatsu, Japan, 403 Architecture utilized scrap timber left over from other projects clad in corrugated plastic.
Photo via Kevin Deevey
↑ Feeling the squeeze of having two small children at home, Canadian architect Kevin Deevey created what he calls a Manhut, an 100-square-foot box in a shady patch of his backyard.
↑ Built by designers Hunter Floyd and Damon Wake for an exhibtion called MicroDwell 2014, the Cinderbox is a freestanding home office that, as they put it, "perfectly transposes to the Sonoran Desert's inherent character."
·Bring That Novel You've Been Working On to This Dapper Cabin [Curbed National]
· 3 Bay Modular Library, Oxfordshire [3rdSpace]
· Daughter Creates Off-the-Grid Writer's Retreat for Her Mother [My Modern Met]
· Desperate for Space, Brits Build in the Backyard [WSJ]
· The Hackney Shed by Office Sian [Architizer]
· The Wall of Zudaji by 403architecture [Dezeen]
· The Manhut by Kevin Deevey [Kevin Deevey]
· Nab a Desert-Inspired Freestanding Home Office for $30K [Curbed National]
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