Client: Private Owner

Location: Chelsworth, Suffolk

Status: Complete

Brief

Set in the most beautiful of rolling rural English countryside, this site had been the noted as the location off a Barn since the Doomsday Book. This oak barn was constructed on the land in 1690. Planning constraints drove the design and the subsequent manner of construction, which reinforced the simple, elegant, modern re-interpretation of a barn.

A full steel frame was erected above the barn and in 4 paneled sections, the 350 year old oak was screwed to ply sheeting to maintain its structural integrity, and then hoisted vertically to dangle in the wind as the footings were rebuilt. Once the frame was restored and dropped onto the foundations, new oak gable walls were formed and a steel tensioned trussed roof was added. The oak sections, the trusses and the metal work were all fabricated in a workshop within one kilometre of the site. The living area is 35 metres long with all other rooms in the structurally required ‘lean-to’.

The design solution is minimal, best described as a “sophisticated tent.”