Barn Conversions & Extension to Create New Dwelling
Planning
Hill Top Barns form part of a traditional and redundant, late 19C, farmstead in a remote and isolated hill top location in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The existing farm outbuildings are arranged formally around two external courtyards. The practice was invited to prepare design proposals to convert three of the outbuildings that are arranged around the more northerly courtyard into a private contemporary family dwelling.
Traditional farm outbuildings were not designed for human habitation, they were designed to function efficiently for their original agricultural use. Consequently, their limited and irregular external openings provide potential occupants with limited daylight, or visual connection to the exterior. Each building was designed to respond to a specific function on the farm, and generally there is little internal connection provided between adjacent buildings, since the buildings were, by in large, accessed externally from a courtyard. As such, the initial design challenge is to provide internal spaces suitable for human habitation in terms of daylighting, visual connection to the outside, and internal connection between separate buildings.
Given the exposed hill top setting of the site among open agricultural land, the primary design response is to create a new interior courtyard garden, that provides the occupants with an external space that is sheltered from the prevailing winds that sweep across the surrounding fields. Drawing on the lengthy precedent of courtyard dwellings within the history of western architecture, the design of the new intimate courtyard garden provides a social and organisational centre of gravity to the dwelling. A circulation route around the courtyard is established, along which the primary functional spaces are arranged, and views out to the landscape beyond are provided.
A series of new architectural interventions are then proposed to provide the required additional accommodation, and the necessary internal connection between the existing buildings. The proposed materiality of the new building elements makes reference to the modern agricultural vernacular that forms the context to the site.