Treehugger: Tiny Backyard Home Office

My friend Preston of Jetson Green criticized me a few weeks back for being too negative about a possibly ground-breaking project. He was right; in that particular case, if I had nothing good to say, I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. I consciously decided to follow that dictum when I first saw the stunning little Tetra Shed or Shedworking. It is a beautiful thing, designed by David Ajasa-Adekunle of Innovation Imperative,an award-winning British architecture firm, and it has been showing up on every design website, including Jetson Green.

So what could I possibly complain about with this little gem? Only this: I once owned a geodesic dome with doors and windows installed in sloping walls, and they leak. That’s why buildings have roof overhangs, why windows and doors are inset and have trim. That door, with its double hinges, is going to be hard to lock and harder to seal. The shape is gorgeous but it is technically a huge problem. My dome had a sloping door like that; the first time I opened it, while carrying my baby daughter, the waterlogged door came off its hinges and clonked me on the head. There are reasons wood buildings have evolved the way they have.

This thing is either going to leak, or it is going to be impossibly expensive. And then it will take a little longer to leak.

There are other issues; Bucky Fuller might point out that the tetrahedron encloses the least volume per unit of surface area. Or that municipalities with limits on floor area measure the overall footprint, whereas what matters to a human being is the headprint, how much room is there to stand up in.

Preston raises a serious issue; are we cheerleaders or critics? I don’t know anymore.By Lloyd Alter

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