When clients visit interior designer Mark Howorth’s new London office, he often takes them to lunch – a twist. They board the boat on his 160-foot barge moored at the Limehouse Marina near Canary Wharf for the morning of the meeting. The skipper then releases them and drops down the Thames until they reach the House of Congress. Lunch will be served on the deck. “There’s something about the boat that makes you feel full of wonder,” he says.
Howorth’s floating office is now headquartered in his company Callender-Howorth. His inspiration came after abandoning a large East London office after the pandemic. Walking past the canal in Islington, where he once lived, he wondered whether the boat was a viable alternative. “But (but I) have had a misconception about small, narrow boats. Security and mice run beyond the size of dogs. He then goes, Water, the barge maker of Collingwood Boat Builders in Liverpool. I came across Space Living and adapted one of its wide barges to create an office and two cabins for a powerful team of eight.
Howorth is one of the growing cohorts evolving the concept of “home office”. Take it out of the real house, but maintain the idea of a live workspace, whether on land, on river or in the ocean. Often it’s mobile. Advances in technology, architects, boat designers and vehicle companies design solutions for clients who want to integrate their home, work and lifestyle in new directions.
Howorts’s Barge is not a full-time live workspace. His home is in southern France, but you can sleep on board while in London. “I’m calm,” he says. “We’re in the marina so it’s not the tide to go up and down.” The marina community also benefits as it’s filled with other creatives, such as jazz musicians and actors. Maintenance is surprisingly easy. It has cutting-edge wifi (“looking like Cape Canaveral above”) and all the mod cons. Howorth’s Barge costs £320,000 to buy it in full, plus a mooring fee of around £800 a month. He paid about £70,000 a year for office space prior to the pandemic.
Waterspace director Chris Hill is seeing more clients like Howorth, who use Burge as a live workspace. He recently equipped a barge for a client who wanted a work area in his second cabin. Hill also plans to move his office to the boat soon. “I work from your spare bedroom” culture can’t stand,” he said, adding that the marina is upgrading their technology in response to an increase in work from the water.
This year, Waterspace has launched Bramley Falls, a new marina in Dockland, London, and is explicitly aiming for this niche. “The boats can be connected to the main broadband network and all facility services, with 10 boats watching the water supply.”
There is no more outdoor water than the high seas. Yacht builder Heesen has reported a similar surge in requests for onboard offices. Of course, every inch is very important on yachts, but clients are increasingly moving from corner desks towards their dedicated workspaces, says Mark Cavendish, executive commercial officer. The 57m full custom all-aluminum motor yacht codename project SetteeSettant is a new build for long-term clients, so Heesen has quadrupled the space allocated to the office compared to previous vessels.
“He is a successful businessman, he has kids in his late teens and early twenties. They use yachts to explore and are incredibly sporty. But he works like a demon. And I think he’ll spend a lot of time working on boating.” He’s not alone. “Technology has allowed people to spend more time on board. Every 50m of boats has a dedicated office space. Back in the 1980s, it’s definitely not. Communication is very affordable. It’s reliable at a good price. Even the Cickey, the 50-foot fairline and Princess come with a Satcom dome,” says Cavendish. The satellite system Heesen has installed on its new build is bulky, efficient, and, crucially, more reliable than many of its predecessors.
It’s mostly StarLink where Erin Jacobs can work wherever she wants from a fast airstream trailer. She runs a cybersecurity consultancy company and has a brick and mortar home in Chicago, but travels around the US for nine months each year, working along the way. Over the past three years, she has recorded approximately 70,000 miles. Jacobs says her third, her current Airstream, is one of the 50 or so, with such high-grade details. She spent $200,000 on the model and then added a $50,000 off-grid package that includes solar panels, generators and batteries that allow her to be self-sufficient for up to two weeks. Starlink is a game changer for that, she says, but there are limitations too.
“It works very well 85-90% of the time, but it wasn’t available in California Redwoods. There was too much tree coverage.”). “I have fretted bedding, and my Airstream is more luxurious than the four seasons. It’s downgraded,” she laughs.
When Jacobs bought this Airstream it was too heavy for her SUV to tow, so she swapped it for a pickup truck. However, there are few other drawbacks. “When you travel and stay in a hotel, even if it’s nice, the desk there finishes work. But this feels like your home is everywhere with you.”
Does she use a zoom backdrop that suggests she is in the office rather than the road for meetings with C-Suite-level clients? “I was hiding it, but now I don’t care. Last week I rode in a hammock and wrote a report.” She is not the only employee of her company. I also work from the road. Another employee also has a trailer like her. “He rings it too, but it reminds me of the dorm room. It’s definitely a guy’s Airstream.”
Not everyone is looking to move and work. Some would like to carve a standalone space close to the home dedicated to opening hours. Olson Kundig architect Tom Kundig calls them accessory buildings. “You need to do physical movements between a sacred house and a blasphemous office. Otherwise, you work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “OK, I work from home. , I don’t want to work from home.” Five years ago, one such accessory building brief may cross his desk every year. Now there are four or five.
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Kundig adds that such sheds and cabins often unlock spaces on large estates. He completed a 70-square-foot office in a shed 300-foot behind a major residence on Big Island in Hawaii. It features design details that connect to the landscape, such as a slide that exposes a glass wall overlooking the carp pond below, and a hanging ruble system. “It’s a place to escape,” he says. “And there’s nothing about that that makes a person fall into a cave.” A standalone building like this costs between $250,000 and $350,000 from Olson Kundig. In a recent cozy project in northern Idaho, Kundich’s client wanted to set up a desk together with a fireplace and sitting corner.
However, it hardly compares to the playfulness of Howorth’s Barge. “The other day I was drinking tea on the upper deck. A huge four-foot carp jumped out of the water right in front of me. And I feed a swan through the kitchen window. I went to a regular office. I will never go back.”
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