This Garden Studio Wrapped in Charred Timber Shingles Acts Like a Giant Bug Hotel

For years, Wayne Euston-Moore, his wife, Jo, and their two sons used the garage of their Hertfordshire home only for storage. "It was soulless, cold, and completely uninviting, but it had a great footprint," Wayne says.

Wayne is the founder of the design-focused recruitment company Black Dot, and he often works from home—so he began to imagine what the garage might look like as a work studio. "I badly needed a place where I could get some serious headspace with limited distractions," he says. One day, while scrolling on Facebook, he came across a post by the London-based architecture firm HyperSpace. "I loved their less-is-more approach," he says, "and we’re completely aligned when it came to sustainability."

Wayne reached out to the firm’s founder, Olli Andrew, and the two got down to brass tacks. "We talked about a high ceiling with vaulted beams, and I knew I wanted two large windows that would connect the space to the outside," Wayne says. They also both liked the idea of sourcing materials within a 10-mile radius. The connection felt like kismet, so Wayne pulled the trigger and commissioned Andrew and Hyper to create the home office of his dreams.