The internal refurbishing of a farm barn so that a new generation of farmers can live there becomes a zoning ordinance project. Such a process will lead us to think about the set of huts, sheds, walls, and paths that have settled in country houses through the years. Now, we need to understand before we work on them, as there has been so little, maybe nothing, done without purpose. A set of parts has shaped the area, corners, and tiny squares with the romantic essence of small towns.
By analyzing the structures that are to be found around the country house, some still standing and others already unclear, we lay out an intervention in the farmland based on demolishing, strengthening, and building new parts. Furthermore, the intervention must allow us to plan for a warehouse-workshop with changing rooms for the work at the farm and an onsite room for a new biomass boiler.
The design of the animal and equipment sheds to be demolished, just like the structures to be strengthened — some wall fences and terraces, as well as two huts, one of them attached to the house — help us shape a half-buried, discontinuous relief that we attach to the existing terrace. Near the home entrance, the new building meets the rest of the actors in play: some newborn walls, the courtyard where there used to be the well, the bridge, a set of cross-sights of the animals and crops, which are the tiny square of the ‘town.’ The garden roof at the higher level starts a lawn, which underlines the hut and at the same time turns itself into the living space in the barn, all across the bridge. There is a relationship to the barn/hut, which has been known for ages, that we now want to appreciate and restore.
This project takes part in the transition strip between the country house and the animals, between the farm and the crops. A landscape as it has always been: suitable and respectful with the work at the fields and farms, but why not maintained as a big garden, too?
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