COVID-19 Drives Demand for Home Office Pods

The unstoppable rise of homeworking calls desperately for solutions to make the home a more suitable workspace. This is not a temporary phenomenon. The rise of homeworking was already happening pre-COVID, but the pandemic accelerated this transition and has prompted us to consider something different from conventional office life. Remote work is here to stay — a recent survey of business leaders found that 82% plan to maintain a partial work-from-home structure even after COVID-19 is no longer a threat. Companies have started seeing the renting of office space as an unnecessary and avoidable cost. But adapting our home spaces to accommodate our working life is not easy — we need to innovate to make sure this new style of working works well for us.

My Room in the Garden was developed by the London-based studio of architects and makers, Boano Prišmontas. Boano Prišmontas had been thinking about home working solutions for a while, but the onset of the pandemic gave them momentum to launch their new homeworking concept in 2020. Distanced desks and laptop stands have populated our living rooms and saturated any shared space. City houses are cramped at the best of time and it’s hard to turn the home into an adequate workspace. Boano Prišmontas believe that it is not fair for employees to have to sacrifice and compromise their domestic environment any further. The solution is not to be found inside the house, but outside.

My Room in the Garden is a modular, prefabricated working pod, that fits into even the tiniest of London’s gardens. The pod seeks to find a balance between low-cost and cosy design. The structure is made of digitally fabricated birch plywood modules, that can be customized according to each space and users’ needs. The wall modules can host different finishes such as a peg wall, mirror, plain or decorated wood, so the user can compose the interiors to their taste and need. The pods are finished with either a clear polycarbonate cladding or glass, which allows natural light to flow into the internal space. The garden room is not just a home office, it can also provide a cosy hideout where you can focus on your hobbies, craft or just find relaxation away from your busy life.

Boano Prišmontas’ My Room in the Garden comes flat-packed and can be built within a day. The standard working pod is 1.8×2.4m and costs £5,000. But the size of the pods can grow infinitely, by simply adding more modules. All modules come at a fixed height of 2.5m, which means these garden pods do not require planning permission. The garden pods can be purchased by individuals, and also by companies looking to reduce their rent cost for big offices in central London by purchasing instead home office pods to their employees.