This project takes as its object of study an existing historic barn, and its surrounding landscape and watercourse. The Hobby Barn, as it is affectionately known, was built in the early 1700’s in Pound Ridge, New York. The Owners of this historic property approached us to perform a series of ongoing design interventions throughout the building and grounds. The overall strategy for work done to the house has been to refurbish certain original architectural features while interjecting modern materials and amenities at key moments within the project. The work is grounded in a belief that a site is animated by its latent programs, spatial organizations, and existing architectures and, inversely, a program is activated by a site, by a physical and social situation, that it must negotiate.
A proposal for a garage + studio annex building on the property is conceived as a system of assembly components in the same vein as a barn. A modern structure of concrete slab floors and bearing walls and a metal and glass curtain wall is clad with recycled wood barn siding, turned on end to create a permeable lattice that skins the structure.