Outdoor spaces
Has space ever meant so much to so many? I’m currently struggling to come up with enough upsides to this pandemic to count on the fingers of one hand, but the explosion of people designing and making outdoor huts, sheds, shepherd’s huts, bolt-holes and sanctuaries has got to be one.
I have got my studio, built by the other Dr A when he was Colour Sergeant A, and he has his back kitchen. The back kitchen is a joke thought up when we were waiting for a production of Waiting for Godot to start on a beach in a Cornish garden. The rest of the audience were opening hampers and bottles of chilled champagne. The lady in front of us said ‘oh darling, the flood was awful… It went right through the back kitchen’. At that moment, I decided that my life’s desire was to have a back kitchen. It inhabits the tiny stone shell of the old wash-house for the village, the water pump for which is through the boot room and by the front door.
When he built the studio, I don’t think any of us had any idea that my business was going to be such a thing and it is definitely on the scale of potting shed rather than warehouse. And so I spend my time eyeing options. Of course, the more often I look at pictures of alpine lodges, or yoga studios in meadows, the more I get shown them. I think a number of hut companies have realised that I might be a soft target and every advert is for scandi-wild living spaces. Not to be seduced by the hard sell, here are some of my favourites.
First though, our very own Grand Designs-esque journey and some behind the scenes pictures just for you. Yes this was 2016 and yes, my photography has come on a long way…
The mountain chapel
Yes, an actual chapel and one of the most beautiful and uplifting buildings I have ever seen. I am endlessly fascinated about how human beings can instill emotion with architecture. Trust me, you cannot walk into the Royal Courts of Justice and not feel like you are going to be held to account for every wrong you may even have thought of. It is absolutely petrifying, and it is intentionally so. I think this building is spiritual and grounding and unifying and exquisitely aesthetic (aesthetically exquisite?), all at once.
‘The mountain chapel is a place of worship, a realm of contemplation and introspection. At the request of the owner, the chapel was laid out for a simple liturgical programme, but it is not a consecrated house of worship room in the strict sense. Instead, it is a place to pause, free of functional and liturgical constraints, a place that allows for many things. Overused symbols that are rarely questioned and well-intentioned gestures are taken into consideration here and adjusted from the point of view of cultural aesthetics. The built space is to be interpreted as a picture and not a container to be at best filled or decorated. The «pure space», the deliberate emptiness, arouses suspense and expectation as an optical counterpart to acoustic silence.’
More here.
A Shepherd’s hut
Did you know that Emma Warren, expert on all things hut, owner of Dimpsey Glamping and part of Blackdown Shepherd’s Huts is a member of Gather? She is, and Dimpsey Glamping is just up the hill from me. Whenever any unexpected money comes in, I say to the other Dr A ‘treat yourself to something nice’ (we’re all about subverting the patriarchy here) and he says to me ‘put that in the hut fund’. When we designed the dye garden and put the chestnut paling in, I pegged out the space at least five metres away from the plum tree. He thought I was giving it enough space to grow. I knew that that was the space we needed to fit a shepherd’s hut through the gate.
I have many huts that I like looking at, but this particularly perfect one is one I keep coming back to. An outdoor kitchen. Simple. Nothing shiny. No primary colours. No twee. You had me at ‘Norwegian woodstove by Jøotul’.
More here.
Drift End
I am, with a bit of a squint and a prevailing wind, less than seven degrees of separation away from Robert Shackleton, the owner of not only Drift End but also 12 Princelet St. I could never meet him though, because I would have to tell him that I have screen-shotted almost every post that he has ever put on Instagram and that we have some plans for a future building project that are almost entirely pieced together from his photographs and his listing in Shootfactory. The tricky thing is that I think Drift End has a multitude of outbuildings and so sometimes the plans resemble a long barn, sometimes a glasshouse, and sometimes an artist’s studio. I think there is a shepherd’s hut in there too.
His instagram here, and also the London website about the Spitalfields house here.
Light folk
First, a disclaimer. I can neither touch my toes nor do a down dog, and my only experience of hypnotherapy had no discernible impact on my chocolate chip cookie consumption whatsoever. I can only imagine one thing would entice me to engage in any form of yoga at all, and that is this space. I have examined it for the pleasure of it, but also because I think it is a masterpiece in using space in a way that creates sensation. It is, like yoga, about pacing and breathing, movement and stillness. It has a balance to it that I find really compelling. Even if it is more likely that I would use that yoga deck for sunbathing and red wine, I think it is a very special space indeed.
If you have any favourites or inspirations that will drive me into a froth of building lust, comment below…. Or share your own outdoor spaces so we can all admire.