Camden Garden Studio

Services
Architecture
Design
Fabrication
Installation

Project Description +

The garden studio is a simple orthogonal timber box of crisp cut, fine grained, natural Larch sitting on a robust, tiled plinth. The legible openings pinwheel off a singular solid timber post that holds the prominent corner. This post carries memories of both the tree trunk beyond (its presence having largely defined of the siting of the building), and more significantly client’s childhood family holidays in France.

The knots and grains of the post are expressed and celebrated with slick marine grade varnish which, not only protect but draws further from the cabin aesthetic of Breton gites (as remembered in their late 20th c. restored state). The post can be touched from the chair of the writers desk, acknowledging the immediacy of ‘timber’ and its relevance to the project; as a structural and cladding building material, as a defining element of the brief in the existing tree and the Proustian connection with client’s early family escapes.

The knotted timber continues around the windows and doors, framing and grouping the openings - emphasising their focus at the prominent corner.

Below the windows is a simple tiled plinth, which borrows from mid century utilitarian and Modernist architecture. The elegant steel doors and window frames fit and sit back within the reveal of the mass. The tiles themselves are set on a grid that aligns with the Larch above, grout lines and expansion joints meeting shadow gaps in the true Modernist ambition that celebrates the elegance which can be achieved through modern methods of manufacture.

Project Summary +

Client Private
Location Camden, London
Sector Residential
Scope Garden Studio / Home Office
Value n/a
Area n/a
Status Complete