"A former barn in rural Essex has not only been saved but also carefully nurtured, such that it is an exemplar of conservation and renewal. The owner was bubbling over with pride when taking the jury around the project – remembering the first day she glimpsed through the old barn doors and was excited to see the timber structure inside. She enjoyed the building then, and the team of architects have worked with her to create a place that continues to bring her great joy. This is a huge credit to all involved in what was a complex construction sequence. The main barn sits inside the gated enclosure of the old farmyard. Inside, the yard has become a landscaped courtyard garden where none of the overall scale has changed, but the details of windows, doors, guttering, downpipes and paving are all explicitly modern while sympathetic to the building. The main entrance is via the old barn doors, symbolically retained but flung open to reveal the new glazed screen, door and the barn structure. Inside, the painstakingly restored original timber structure is fully revealed, with replacement components, also in oak, left square in contrast to the older, more worn elements. The building remains fundamentally a barn: while there are the architectural elements of the kitchen, the study cube, and the fireplace inserted, rooms only exist in subsidiary spaces or outbuildings. The scale is both domestic and awe-inspiring. The clarity of thinking alongside the restrained use of materials brings meticulous detailing into focus. Flooring is of bricks beautifully laid in a grid structure that continues without mortar externally. With the client in charge, and having stripped everything back to the timber frame, local timber expert and master carpenter Dr Joseph Bispham restored and made it structurally sound above the retained brick ‘ground’. Only then was a contract placed for the main building works supervised by the architects. This two-stage process in some ways appears to have liberated the design thinking so that the new cladding – with structural strengthening, birch-faced ply internally and traditional black boarding externally – butts up or embraces the old timbers to create the outer skin. The side volumes contain bedrooms, also birch ply-lined. Dynamic bathroom pods sit within the space of each, offering privacy doors that fold out and translucent ceiling ‘lids’ to let daylight in or create opportunities for backlighting. Beyond the main central axis, there is an open view of the fields punctuated by a clear square pool of water surrounded by a perennial meadow. So, both in the landscaping response, executed by the client as the garden designer, and the ‘light touch’ of the original form and structure by the architects, the building has been renewed for future generations with respect. The jury was impressed by the care in conservation taken by all involved, but also enjoyed the contemporary interventions made without fear of undermining the quality of the original building. The final product is graceful, resolutely modern and a robust piece of enduring rural architecture."

Jury Citation, RIBA House of the Year 2025