Barns and Halls
Cathy Hawley and Hugh Strange
We started the year at the RIBA Drawings Collection at the V&A looking at original work by Andrea Palladio and a number of Arts & Crafts architects. Developing models and representations in response to the archival material, in order to explore the spatial and material qualities of some exemplary buildings. We are looking at the arrangement of domestic interiors, particularly focusing on the ideas of the domestic 'Hall', a central, functionally non-specific room at the heart of the house, and on the relationship between rooms. We are also interested in the way that these architects considered and transformed the utilitarian character of farm structures and incorporated them into their designs, either directly, or through the architectural language of the buildings. On our study trip we visited the villas of Palladio in Italy, staying together at his Villa Saraceno, looking at the character of adjacency in his plan layouts, and in particular at his designs for Barchessa, where grand house and farm building were combined in composition, and the simplicity of agricultural form and construction was embraced in the development of a new typology of country dwelling.
These investigations became the raw material for our studio project this year, which continues our interest in the edges of London; this time extending our trajectory from the end of the underground at High Barnet, through Hatfield to Welwyn Garden City. We are interested in the landscape where suburban and commuter settlements meet the vestiges of villages, rural farming communities and industry. The barn and shed have traditionally been thought of as simple building types, whose unselfconsciousness approximates to either a traditional, or modern, vernacular. We are investigating this characteristic and the manner in which it often leads to simple forms dominated by large roofs, combined with an economic rigour and a direct approach to construction techniques. In these peripheral areas residential, industrial and agricultural uses co-exist, and the small scale of rural and suburban housing sit together with the larger volumes of barns and sheds. We are studying the opportunities these juxtapositions of scale offer. Student proposals will focus on producing hybrid buildings that combine residential accommodation with other uses.
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