The Drawing Shed is the new architectural office for ByOthers, a studio set up by Richard Keys in 2020 and now set at the far end of a long, narrow south London garden. The project was largely self-built, designed and devised so that all the necessary components could be carried through the narrow hallway of the Victorian terrace – there was no separate garden access.
A south London architectural office in a garden
Key believes that architecture should be steeped in practicality. For the Drawing Shed, these considerations ran all the way to the 20 sq m building’s foundations, which were hand-wound into the ground using a torque wrench designed to take nuts off truck wheels.
‘It was all driven by context,’ Keys says from within the warm, timber-filled interior. Unable to get any kind of mechanical excavation to the site, everything had to be dug by hand, with ‘old fashioned leverage’ used to drill the foundations and avoid traditional poured concrete. It also means the entire building is truly demountable and could theoretically be packed up and taken to another location.
Above ground, the studio is formed from three heavily insulated timber boxes, clad in 100 individual and unique Corten steel ‘trays’, slender laser cut panels that are affixed to the structure with a proprietary fixing system. The location of every single panel was determined by a custom-created code system, developed directly from the original 3D model and etched into the metal.
Describing it as a ‘very simple project that complicated things for fun’, the Drawing Shed gave Keys and his team of three the opportunity to experiment with things like digital fabrication and adapting materials for alternate uses. A case in point is the dipped iridescent steel that clads the internal bathroom pod and doubles up as a magnetic pinboard to display sketches and plans.
The structural ceiling with its deep diagonal ribs adds to the feeling of warmth created by layers of sheep’s wool insulation and surface finishes of clay plaster. The plan steps back as the building reaches the end of the garden, with windows on the side elevation maximising the amount of daylight the little studio receives.
The Drawing Shed is the practice’s first completed work, but during its conception and creation, the small Peckham-based practice has seen an explosion in interest and work. Currently on the metal pinboard are plans for a block of flats and community space in nearby Lewisham, along with a new studio structure in the Cotswolds. Other projects are in the works in Keys' native Northern Ireland, as well as Yorkshire and the Chilterns.
All ByOthers projects share the same ethos, that of working closely with the client to maximise the value they get from their project, whether monetary, personal or spatial. ‘Architects have quite a responsibility to help their clients reach ambitious goals,’ he says, adding slightly mischievously, ‘We pour petrol on that optimism – from a small shed in Peckham we can do anything.’
To further these ambitious goals, Keys has also set up a small construction firm, Places ByOthers, in order to realise projects with maximum efficiency. ‘I’m on a crusade to get more architects into development,’ he says. The studio is currently working on a self-initiated project for nine new-build houses in a back-land lot in south London. ‘Traditionally, value has been extracted at different stages of the planning process,’ Keys explains. ‘Affordable housing is only unviable because so much value has been taken out of the project along the way.’
Such projects wouldn’t be possible without close collaboration, with regular structural engineers the London Structures Lab, contractors, fabricators, metalworkers and joiners. ‘We always do prototypes and mock-ups and tell clients of the value of these things,’ Keys stresses, although the hands-on approach clearly works best.
Just a few metres away from the large pivoting glass door to the Drawing Shed, another new project is taking shape. A new double-height extension will transform the rear of the existing terrace, with a ground floor living room opening up directly to the garden, carefully composed by Keys' landscape gardener partner. When complete, the ensemble will be a striking showcase of the ByOthers ethos, from deploying Passivhaus design standards to embracing challenge in all its forms, at any scale.
