It started with a sketch

A number of mini ideas have been percolating in my head in the week I've been off work, with influences including blog reading I'm catching up on, magazines I'm reading and scenes already made.

Yesterday as I collapsed onto the sofa after a usual busy end-of-year day (it was my annual Vacuum Under Things Day, which didn't get terribly far as the first thing I vacuumed under was the table next to my bed, which required shifting rather a lot of books first. Which also needed to be vacuumed) I found myself dreaming of a retreat.

And, suddenly, I grabbed the nearest available piece of scrap paper and pen and sketched this:

(It seemed rather apt that it was an article on Judy Horacek's work:

If you don't know of it, go check it out immediately. She is a national treasure).

This morning over breakfast I was reading the latest Inside Out magazine and came across this page:

 which brought together several of the themes I've been playing with recently, including the idea of a creative retreat, a small shed and the re-use of recycled building pieces.

This lead me to picture a collection of similar but unique sheds dotted around a property, with each visiting artist adding their own homely touches for the duration of their stay (thanks are due here to Kate Ward for documenting her time in residency at Hill End so thoroughly, and Wallpaper magazine for an article I now can't find in my pile of back issues. Plus, of course, My cool shed...). And, more intriguingly, this idea would give me the freedom to explore a similar themed series to the Limited pop-up shop series, which each build giving me the opportunity to create a quite different occupant

The final piece of the puzzle came to me this afternoon during the screening of the movie Touch the Earth Lightly (about Glen Murcutt’s work), which was part of an Arc film event Australian Architects on Film 1. One of the people being interviewed in the film was standing on a balcony in Paris, overlooking a vista of rooftops. And I suddenly thought 'The Garrets! A holiday village for creatives!'.

On my return home, I started a mock-up (and got quite nostalgic as I remembered that this was my first window...)

I added a plain white table, 

and a lovely vintage wire bed, which I trial-dressed with the table cloth from the seaside shack as a bed spread (what I originally bought it for) and an old hanky providing faggotted-edged bed linen.

Then a chair

before the wall with the french door was added to see how it looked.

Monastic. Serene. And worth finishing off properly (or as properly as is needed for a good blog finish)