When Langley, British Columbia, architect Tim Vander Hoek founded his own firm Base Architecture in 2020, he knew an office in the second bedroom of his rental would have to be temporary, especially with he and his wife Cassy expecting a baby.

Yet as a parent-to-be, Tim wanted to be close to home. Instead of renting a suburban office space, why not apply the cost of a year’s office rental to designing and building a tiny office of his own? After all, earlier in his career, Tim had done the same with a home for his parents, tackling about half the labor himself.

So that’s exactly what he did. Tim’s resulting project, Light Ribbon Studio, is a 60-square-foot office space completed in September this year. At six-by-ten feet it’s got the feel of a large closet, but one that’s full of light thanks to its namesake clerestory windows, and portable with the tiny wheels it sits on.

$993 Floor Structure (Wood & Wheels)	$1,723 Wall & Roof Structure	$960 Acrylic Windows With Metal Framing
$713 Custom Door (With Hardware)	$1,724 Insulation & Membranes	$2,631 Exterior Cedar (With Rainscreen Mat)
$428 Metal Roof	$150 Interior Built-Ins	$559 Fixtures & Fittings
Grand Total: $9,881

“I knew a studio could be a portfolio piece,” Tim explains, “so why not do something creative? And I wasn’t scared of being in a compact space because in England, my wife and I lived in a 220-square-foot flat for a year. Because this would be such a small building, I knew I wouldn’t need a permit and could start building immediately.”

To build his tiny-office-on-wheels, Tim purchased locally-sourced lumber and plywood for less than $10,000 Canadian dollars (about $7,350 U.S.), a more reasonably priced aspect of his project. Through the studio’s central door is a plywood interior with exposed framing, and a built-in desk to the left ringed by bookshelves above and below. To the right is a stand-up drafting table with more rows of shelving underneath, and the structure’s sole eye-level window. Because the insulation is part of the rain-screen exterior wall system, the interior’s framing is left exposed, the walls clad with varying grades of plywood.

“The walls and ceiling are basic rough framing plywood, whereas my desk surface is a bit nicer grade,” the architect says. “I did that as an experiment so that I would have a variety of grades on hand. When I’m considering different types, I can just look around and they’re all here.”

Its walls filled with shelves, the structure has just the one traditional window, positioned above the drafting table. But its band of clerestory windows, comprised of acrylic sheeting rather than glass, brings in ample light. Because of the acrylic, the sloping roof appears to float above the rest of the structure, which is the project’s hallmark feature.

“I knew I wanted this to be something a little different,” Tim explains. “I didn’t want to just build a shed. So it was like, How can I build a thought-provoking shed? I tried things like rounded corners and arched rooms, but because I had to build it, it ended up being a simple structure informed by the pragmatic things that I needed: a certain amount of shelving. So that’s what prompted lifting the roof up and having the band of windows on the top.”

Without moving his head, Tim gets glimpses of surrounding treetops through the wraparound band of panes.

Creating them was one of the more experimental aspects of the build, says Tim. “I drew up the CNC file, sent it to the supplier and had it cut according to my specs.” It wasn’t a completely smooth process, though: The acrylic pieces initially didn’t fit the wood openings Tim made, and had to be redone.

Mounting off-the-shelf windows would have been the easier route, but a far less rewarding one. “It was worth it just to try new things and experiment and to get this beautiful frameless strip around the top,” Tim says. “Lifting the roof off brings down the perceived height. You really don’t notice the roof at all. And during daylight, I almost never turn any light on.”

The studio is clad in cedar, which Tim left unstained not as an experiment, but to prove a point. “People often won’t do cedar because they think they have to maintain it, which isn’t necessarily the case,” he says. “You can let it weather naturally.” This was one of the more expensive elements of the build, comprising more than 10 percent of the total budget. But, Tim reasoned, its durability will pay for itself in time, and its good looks are already paying off.

“Products that try to mimic wood—it just does not work,” he explains, pointing out that the rental house his modest cedar-clad shed sits beside is clad with a popular brand cement-board siding. “It's like putting a block of aged cheddar beside Cheez Whiz.”

The studio is easily movable thanks to tiny caster wheels Tim sourced from an auto-parts store. He and his wife are renters, so should they decide to move, the studio can be rolled onto a flatbed tow truck to be relocated.

“During construction, the wheels were incredibly valuable because I had a tight spot to work with,” he recalls. “In the morning, I’d push it away from the house and then push it back. In tandem with the roof, the lifting of the cabin slightly off the ground helps give the entire structure a sense of sculptural lightness and kinetics.”

The hardest part of the process, Tim says, was finding time while starting his own firm and being there for his young family. Yet he also doesn’t regret the design features that made the project more challenging.

“There’s always a tension between what’s best for now and what’s best for later,” he says. “Best for now is the easiest way of building, but that might compromise the experience of it later. There were many cases where I said, I’d rather have some pain for those few months and enjoy it forever than compromise early and it’s mediocre thereafter. I wanted to push conventional stuff, to learn from it. Now that it’s built, it was all worth it.”

More Budget Breakdown:

An Architect Builds an Experimental Garden Studio for Less Than £5k

A DIY Designer Builds a Tiny Guesthouse for $109K

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Base Architecture / @basearchitecture.ca

Builder: Timothy Vander Hoek

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