A compact garden music studio in Basingstoke by Garden Spaces
Garden Spaces designed this 2.7m x 2.6m music studio for a small garden in Basingstoke, Hampshire, with their Gold acoustic package, an acoustic porch and air conditioning.
Garden Spaces design each building around the garden it has to fit, and this music studio in Basingstoke, Hampshire, was a bespoke design for a small garden. It measures 2.7m x 2.6m externally and 2.5m high, enclosing a room of 2.3m x 2.2m.
We have written about a lot of Garden Spaces music rooms, and this is the smallest of them. It still carries their Gold acoustic package, an acoustic porch, air conditioning and an acoustic wall vent, so the size of the room hasn’t limited what it can do.
At a glance
- Use: a music studio designed for a small garden, with a 2.3m x 2.2m room inside.
- Size: 2.7m x 2.6m outside and 2.5m high, with 2.1m of headroom inside.
- Acoustics: the Gold acoustic package, an acoustic porch with two sealed doors, an acoustic wall vent and no windows.
- Construction: screw pile foundations, lengthened to 1550mm beside the lower garden, and Thermowood cladding.
- Company: Garden Spaces, working across England and Wales.
More garden music rooms →
Working around a change in level
The studio sits in a corner of the garden, beside a raised patio and above the lawn. Two features of the site shaped the foundations.
The building was positioned to avoid the footing of the retaining wall at the rear of the garden. And because the lower part of the garden comes close along the left-hand elevation, the screw piles on that side were lengthened from 1250mm to 1550mm.
An acoustic porch within the roofline
The entrance is the Garden Spaces acoustic porch. The outer door is anthracite PVC with acoustic glazing, and a small lobby behind it leads to a solid internal fire door with acoustic seals. With both doors shut, sound has two sealed doors and the air between them to pass through rather than one.
The porch projects 450mm from the main wall, and the roof and Thermowood cladding carry forward over it, so from the garden the building keeps its simple box shape. Either side of the door is a recessed bay with a downlight in the soffit, lighting the way in after dark. The anthracite of the door is picked up in the plinth and the roof edge.
A studio without windows
Glazing is the leaky element in an acoustic build, and here it has been left out of the studio altogether. Daylight reaches the lobby through the glazed outer door, and the room itself is lit by a ceiling-mounted LED light.
Fresh air comes in through an acoustic wall vent set high on the wall, and an air conditioning system handles heating and cooling, so the room stays comfortable with both doors closed. Garden Spaces’ own acoustic testing demonstrates around 60dB of noise reduction from their music rooms, even with ambient noise around 40dB, and you can watch some of the tests on the Garden Spaces music rooms page.
Height without planning
At 2.5m high, the building stays within the height usually allowed for a garden building close to a boundary under Permitted Development. Inside, that leaves 2.1m of headroom once the acoustic layers are in place.
Finished and ready to use
Walls and ceiling are plastered and painted white, and the floor is laid in wood-effect laminate. The full electrical installation includes the studio’s own consumer unit and sockets on more than one wall, so equipment can be set up where it is needed. Garden Spaces handled the project from design through to handover, leaving a studio ready to play and record in.
Learn more about Garden Spaces
Garden Spaces design and build bespoke garden rooms across mainland England and Wales, with acoustic music rooms a particular specialism. To find out more, explore the music rooms section of www.gardenspaces.co.uk, call 0845 387 9 387, or email info@gardenspaces.co.uk.
