Clients building up-market homes have for many years required more than just a study from us, but due to the COVID virus there is a lot more interest in home offices.
“TIME CANNOT BE INFLUENCED BY MANKIND: IT GIVES EACH OF US A BEGINNING, AND AN END. AND THIS MAKES US QUESTION THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WHAT COMES BETWEEN. BUT IF YOU CAN CREATE SOMETHING TIME CANNOT ERODE, SOMETHING WHICH IGNORES THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ARTICULAR ERAS OR MOMENTS, SOMETHING TRULY TIMELESS, THIS IS THE ULTIMATE VICTORY”. – Anon
Depending on the needs of the homeowner, a study or home-office can be a simple nook in a passage or a nice one-person study. But many entrepreneurs are looking at a proper home-office, where they can see clients, have meetings for groups of people, entertain or relax.
It is important to discuss the positioning of the home-office, many clients prefer it o be either accessible direct from the guest parking or from the entrance hall.
We are in the process of designing studies for one or two people, often with a reception area and space for a personal assistant. Common requirements are boardroom spaces with a kitchenette and guest toilet, a lounge area either as part of the study or boardroom, and some form of a wet bar.
The study itself may function as a library, but we are regularly requested to design a proper library as part of the home-office set-up.
Often it is a requirement that the husband and wife have adjoining studies with some form of openable partition, be it glass or solid sliding doors or folding acoustic partition, especially now with regular e-meetings. A storeroom cum filing space and a walk-in safe is also popular, as well as a cigar lounge cum whiskey bar. Nowadays this complex sometimes merge with a mancave to create an entertainment area, with billiards or a Foosball table, good audio-visual equipment or a proper home theatre with a bar or wine cellar.
Studies for children are also regularly requested. This can be placed near the kid’s rooms or next to a pyjama lounge. Another solution is to design a kid’s playroom next to the kitchen where they can be supervised, and as they grow up, this becomes their study.
At Nico van der Meulen Architects we believe that functionality should always take precedence .
Designing any building we ensure that we understand the brief and try to execute it to the best of our abilities, while adding creativity and bringing combined experience of over 90 years to bear. In the end the final solution must be what you require but at the same time the solution must delight and improve the lives of those who inhabit our buildings.
Ayn Rand said:
Most people build as they live—as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn’t build, when he has the means, it’s because his life has not been what he wanted.”
“Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.