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Nick
Fowler has a sheet of paper
somewhere with a few rough
calculations jotted down on it.
He can’t remember the exact
figures, but the conclusion he
came to is easily expressed: the
cost of
 commuting
is astronomical – both to your
pocket and to the environment.
He set out on this exercise
during the planning stages for a
new venture which aims to
provide high-quality,
affordable, ecologically
sustainable garden offices to
people who want to work from
home in a pleasing environment.
Even before recent rises in fuel
prices, it has been increasingly
clear that driving, say, 10 or
12 miles into Birmingham and
back again each day, paying for
parking and even buying a daily
sandwich for lunch adds up to
large sums of money.
And then there are the other
costs of running a car and,
perhaps even more importantly,
the time it takes from your
week. Just think how much more
you could do with an extra 10
hours a week?
It was these calculations that
convinced Nick and his business
partners at Heartwood
Conservatories that demand for
home office space will continue
to grow.
To meet this demand, they have
launched Aspect Structures as a
division of Heartwood, based at
Hillier Garden Centre,
Mappleborough Green, with a
brand new, super-high
specification office at its
heart.
 As
you can see from the pictures on
this page, it is a leap forward
from some of the garden rooms
that people have been using as
garden offices.
Nick, whose background is in
corporate finance but who has
been “in people’s back gardens”
creating extra space for the
past five years, sees the Aspect
office as the future.
“The
type of constructions being sold
in the past were pretty sheds
that we turned into offices,” he
explains.
“The market has now grown up and
there is a second generation
which is British-made, rather
than imported from Europe, and purpose-designed.”
It has been designed by
Heartwood, using their vast
experience in creating
high-quality conservatories and
orangeries, to go beyond the
usual building control
requirements because the Aspect
is intended to be used as
commercial premises, perhaps
with public access.
Heartwood director Mark Simons says the whole building is produced using
materials from sustainable
sources by skilled joiners
working at their factory in
Lakeside,
Redditch. “All the
joinery is hardwood, made by
hand at the Heartwood factory,
and the hardware is high-quality
stainless steel made in Germany,” he explains. “It has got
the best joinery you can get,
with 90mm frames, which just
does not happen anywhere else.
And it is built in many ways
with building regulations that
you would expect with a
dwelling.”
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