In a city of academics, students and book lovers, it’s unsurprising that Inside Out Oxford‘s award-winning garden rooms are increasingly being commissioned as home libraries.
While over the past few Covid-influenced years the Inside Out Oxford team has been flat out building garden rooms as home offices and retreats, 2023’s new trend is for libraries.
Two Oxford professors, who commissioned a library as a new workspace in their garden, are delighted with the results. “We needed a room primarily for books and study and worked out a design with the Inside Out Oxford team,” they said.
“As book-lovers and artists ourselves, we really enjoy these projects”
“The space for the room was limited, but it was exciting to realise its potential and to create a sizeable and attractive room.Our shelving was bespoke, to maximise book storage and for aesthetic reasons, and we were thrilled with the finished room. It is even more attractive, and significantly larger internally, than we had anticipated.”
Jim Gabriel from Inside Out Oxford says: “We have built a number of libraries and studies in gardens for academics – some of them retiring from college life, some adding that capability at home. As book-lovers and artists ourselves, we really enjoy these projects.
“Each project has been different and completely unique. Academics are lovely customers to work with as they really know what they want, and enjoy the fact that the journey to a design is bespoke from start to finish. They have hundreds of books and their books are their friends.
We’ve built around trees, on slopes, with and without washrooms and kitchenettes… anything is possible, within limits!
“All these spaces need to be warm, cosy, inviting, comfortable, dry, and very practical. You want to spend a lot of time in your library! People choose us for this reason as it’s so difficult to buy anything off the shelf that ticks all the boxes.
“Even when we’re building, as their new workplace takes shape, our customers can react to the emerging shapes and tweak design decisions. I’ve lost count of the hand-crafted shelving and desk systems we’ve built for academics, it’s great fun to do and the results are always stunning. We’ve built around trees, on slopes, with and without washrooms and kitchenettes… anything is possible, within limits!
And do they use it as much as anticipated? “Through late summer and autumn we made regular use of the room as a space to read, to write, and also to entertain.
A good investment then? “We consider the finished product to be very good value because it adds a new dimension to the garden. So even though the cost is significant the investment has been a good one,” the professors add, before returning once more to their beloved books no doubt.
For information and quotes from Inside Out Oxford go to https://insideoutoxford.uk
