Threads Through Sheffield

Shed Men by Gareth Jones (2004)If you can forgive him for the slightly sexist title, this book I discovered in the local Oxfam bookshop in South Manchester is worth a look. If only to see photographs and read accounts of the eccentric male lifestyles that do exist in the back gardens of the most ordinary and mundane places in Britain.I wholely agreed with one male shed owner described in the book when he says: “how they [sheds] still present a Romantic opposition to uniformity and conformity, an opposition to Modernist edifices like skyscrapers. “Sheds are temporary structures, the kind of things people put up at crossroads, before villages and towns”. And he loves the element of imperfection and contradiction, the fact that sheds are ramshackle, beautiful things.”If I was to pick out one architect who seems to revel in this “element of imperfection and contradiction” it would be the French Architect Patrick Bouchain. His most recent work: Le Channel (2005-2007) a cross-disciplinary arts centre in Calais, France shows the ‘Shed-concept’ on a larger scale, although still possessing all the intricacies and personality that the humble garden shed has in abundance. I am sure the ‘architecture’ that has resulted is certainly not to everyone’s taste, although what it does very well is relinquishing some of the Architect’s control through collaboration, which allows for the unexpected to occur. Bouchain’s long affair with the Circus in France is one such partnership which is resulting in some unforeseen ‘beautiful’ (whatever that is) ‘architecture’ (whatever that is).Images from: www.lechannel.org