Dream of a Sweet Retreat in This Backyard Brooklyn Writer's Pavilion
The holidays can get hectic. Wouldn’t it be lovely to escape to your own quiet space for a bit of contemplation? Architensions — a multidisciplinary architecture and urban design studio based in Greenpoint — recently completed a peaceful-looking writing pavilion for the backyard of a Brooklyn client. Check out this beautiful little building. The pavilion sits…
The holidays can get hectic. Wouldn’t it be lovely to escape to your own quiet space for a bit of contemplation? Architensions — a multidisciplinary architecture and urban design studio based in Greenpoint — recently completed a peaceful-looking writing pavilion for the backyard of a Brooklyn client.
Check out this beautiful little building.
The pavilion sits atop an angular concrete base that provides a rough-hewn and weighty feel for the steps before vanishing beneath the side and rear of the wooden structure. This disappearing act adds a sense of lightness and surrealism to the front view of the building. It looks as though the room is floating.
The exterior of the structure is sheathed in black-stained cedar — a treatment that retains the texture of the wood but gives it a cleaner, more modern feel. It also seals the wood against sun and water damage.
The interior is covered with a lighter natural pine plywood, creating a nice visual contrast between inside and out. The shape and angle of the room was designed to bring in natural light, and the skylight was specifically designed as a “large sloped light well.”
Judging from the drawings, the building can’t be much bigger than 5 feet wide and 6 feet long. It holds only a small folding desk, a fiberglass Eames chair, and a few books and pieces of art. An angled exterior wall creates space for a storage closet, accessible from outside.
[h/t: Treehugger | Photos by Cameron Blaylock for Architensions | Drawings by Architensions]
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reminds me of the treadmill everyone buys and swears they will use. sooner of later it ends up a place for dirty laundry. let’s visit this shed 6 months from now when it’s 90 degrees and has no air. i predict this will become what it was meant to be a shed. cute idea, not practical.
Where does then DOB stand on something like this? Do you not have to file plans if it’s under a certain size and you can build out of wood?
OMFGSMHGDS
GDS
I don’t even know how seriously they take the “portable” part of this. Our neighbors built a pretty large shed thing on their lot that is definitely not portable (although I don’t think it has a proper foundation) a few years back. They did get dinged by the DOB for the height (over 7’6″) so they had to reduce the height, but it’s pretty big and is not something you could move without tearing it down. This was maybe 5 years ago, though. We’ve seen LOTS of houses with sheds in the backyard and none of them looked temporary or portable, although most of them were quite small.
I don’t really fully understand this one specifically as it looks like they don’t have any electricity and will get mighty cold/dark in the fall/winter/spring months.