High Barn (Phase 1)

Liss, United Kingdom

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High Barn (Phase 1)

Liss, United Kingdom

Firm

Astronaut Kawada Architecture

Type

Residential › Private House

YEAR

2012

SIZE

3000 sqft - 5000 sqft

This house has evolved from a farmer's longhouse, set on a rural hillside. It has been rebuilt to capture the spirit of the original farm structure while extending out to connect and engage with its surrounding landscape. The main building is a sequence of small and large-scale spaces for living and sleeping. Material expression is simple and dignified, inside and out. Spaces and detail focus on the essence of the place to create a sense of both drama and honesty. Knapped flint walls are reinstated around large openings that once allowed wagons and livestock to enter. The house links below ground to the kitchen and dining space that is cut into the hillside. This intervention is formed from a splintered scattering of rendered walls, stone and glass, embedded into the hill. They appear to have been disturbed by the metaphorical blade of a plough. This forms the main structure of the roof, constructed as two large 'aerofoils' wrapped in ribbed zinc, appearing to cut through the ground. The visible surface of these aerofoils continues internally, as an exposed underside, forming part of the ceiling of the space, and allows the form to be read three dimensionally. Large expanses and smaller fragments of glass throughout the structure allow daylight to both wash and animate the space. The main glass face of the dining space slides across and disappears into the hillside. This allows the internal space to flood out into the landscape and summarises the intended relationship between the two. Stepping away from the house out into the landscape and viewing from a distance, you immediately understand the reasoning. The longhouse sits with a sense of dignity on the hillside while the contrasting intervention allows you to live within the landscape that makes the place what it is.

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High Barn (Phase 1)

Liss, United Kingdom

High Barn (Phase 1)

Liss, United Kingdom

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team