It’s not exactly a shed. It’s a gatehouse-atelier-kura-shed with a basement. I love how it completes a triangle of buildings to form a compound.
As you come up our driveway, the gatehouse stands tall and imposing at the top of the hill. The barn doors open into “B1,” the concrete structure that holds our grass cutters and shovels. The concrete basement also is the retaining wall for the driveway on the other side. The old block wall was cracked and starting to lean and crumble. Now the walls are solid again.
On the upper side, we have a small building with a deck. I described my aesthetic to Sasaki-san and he designed it. Since he also built our house, he knew all the cues to make them look good together. For example, vertical cedar siding and wide eaves. The door design echos the ones in my kitchen.
People think it is strange for a shed to have a wood deck, but it is a favorite lookout point for the cats and I use it for woodworking. When we have parties and events, I expect this will be spillover space for quiet conversations.
And check out the stairs – a whacking huge slab of cedar cantilevered over two ancient boshu ishi stones from a local quarry. Those stones used to sit under the shipping container that was parked here. I am glad they are visible and useful.
An extra delight is the onigawara end caps on the roof. My bankinya-san selected the design for me, which includes wind and clouds, the Shichiyō kamon, and little hearts. It’s a classic and it makes me very happy.
Inside, the shed is split into tool storage on the left and atelier workspace on the right. In the center of it all I rigged a yoga silk for hanging upside down or just sitting and thinking.
I was able to repurpose some ancient worktables from the barn and use the shelf that my friend Yoshi built for me in 2002. I built myself a standing worktable, too. I have been hanging up pegboard and shelving and slowly moving my materials out here.
The atelier is for all the messy art that I don’t want to do in the house – extracting botanical color, making paper, dying fabrics, and working with chemicals.
Someday it might get electricity. For the foreseeable future, I will run an extension cord from the house when I want to spin up the blender. 🙂
