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May 29, 2008

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IT'S OFTEN SAID that innovation springs from necessity. Try running a business out of the 9-by-12 spare bedroom in your house when half of it is monopolized by a bed.

That's the situation Joseph Marek, a landscape architect in Santa Monica, Calif., found himself in before transforming his 400-square-foot garage into the colorful, contemporary design hub that it is today. John Patrick, a former vice president at International Business Machines, turned independent company director, author and speaker in Ridgefield, Conn., wanted a wire- and distraction-free home office, which is a feat considering he has four computers, a flat-screen TV and an entire printing station complete with three types of printers, a scanner and a digital scale for weighing shipments. Printmaker Liz Lyons Friedman and author Amy Bloom, on the other hand, just wanted to get away. "It was the hum of the house," says Bloom. "I often had to wait until everyone was asleep to get any work done."

But rather than continue working under distracting conditions, these business owners took matters into their own hands and designed work spaces to fit their needs. After all, says Patrick, "it's where I spend the most time. Why not make an investment in it?"

The key to a perfectly productive work space, says Debra Prinzing, a Los Angeles author who has interviewed a number home-based business owners for her new book "Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways," is detachment. "You have to be able to walk into this space and have it be fully dedicated," she says. A truly separate space boosts productivity — and "quality of life is so much more enhanced," she adds.

As more and more Americans work from home — be it running a business or telecommuting for a job — the home office, which was once relegated to a small corner in a kitchen or perhaps a dank basement, is finally receiving some well-deserved attention.

Here's how some crafty business owners are taking their work home:

1.) Joseph Marek — landscape architect and owner of Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture in Santa Monica, Calif. (josephmarek.com)

 

Design is hardly a foreign concept to Joseph Marek. However, fluorescent lights and sterile white walls certainly are. Seven years ago, shortly after starting up his own landscape architecture firm, Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture, Marek quickly went to work on his own home office — formerly, a 400-square-foot concrete garage.

Photograph by William Wright from "Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways"

Despite doing much of the design work himself — namely, the outdoor seating and other garden areas — the project still rang in at around $20,000. That amount, says Marek, included laying dry wall, painting, installing a skylight and windows, building custom desks and shelves, and furnishing the space. To keep costs in perspective, he notes that "renting a comparable-size place would [cost] about $1,600 a month."

While Marek still jokingly calls his home office the "garage," the name is just about the only remnant of its dingy former self. Back when it was a garage, "I didn't want to work; I didn't want to come out here and do anything," he says. Today, the paprika-colored stucco structure is not only a fully functional home office with electricity and Internet access, but also "a testing ground for my work," the architect says.

 

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