Design Buy Build Issue 20 2016 | Page 5

MODERN HOMES FEATURE The design eschews the language of the typical barn conversion, instead making the cluster of historic agricultural buildings into an atmospheric getaway for relaxing and gathering. O ur clients, a fashion designer & a digital designer, are avid collectors of reclaimed architectural artefacts. Together with the existing fabric of the barn, their discoveries form the material palette. The result – part curation, part restoration – is a unique interpretation of the 18th Century threshing barn, a building type that often engenders a uniformity of approach when converted. Rather than demand specific spaces or programmes, their brief focused on materiality and atmosphere, and on creative reuse of the existing volumes. Our task was to combine the quality of the surviving barn fragments with the texture and tone of their found materials. Set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the 18th Century threshing barn, dairy and stables are a prominent feature from the North Downs Way. To maintain the barn’s brooding presence - and to provide security and a sense of protection from rolling Channel mists - the barn is usually kept in a closed state. However, industrial-scale kinetic mechanisms create openings that address key views into the countryside. doors, and protect a vast rotating window operated by an adapted chain-lift. To the East front, an American aircraft-hangar door allows the Massive, insulated shutters recall the original barn ARCHITECTS LIDDICOAT & GOLDHILL LOCATION FOLKESTONE, KENT, UK ARCHITECTS IN CHARGE DAVID LIDDICOAT, LIDDICOAT & GOLDHILL AREA 213.0 SQM 5