Once an abandoned piggery, now a fine example of elemental architecture, The Makers Barn goes to great lengths to honour its agricultural origins. Borrowing its robust pitched roof from the nearby Tudor cottages—and clad with vertical larch planks—the barn cuts a utilitarian silhouette against a meadow of tall grasses and wildflowers on London’s rural fringe. Built for play and purpose, it’s the kind of environ that causes its inhabitants to feel well.
From its top pokes a central concrete chimney, board-formed to take on the knots and grain patterns of wood—a technique that nods to the Brutalist movement and adds an industrial counterbalance to the countryside home. The interiors, too, are marked by contrast. A steel table on a flocculent rug. A mid-century modular sofa lit by a root-like iconic late-80s floor lamp, designed by an Italian artist living in Japan. There’s manipulated pottery, a young floss silk tree, and end-grain mosaic floors, made from swirling blocks of wood cut across the grain. The artisanal micro-kitchen is a masterclass in purposeful design—full of clever craftsmanship, custom hanging racks that display forged steel skillets from a Dorset blacksmith, and a casement window that brings the grasslands into the galley.
The watchword for The Makers Barn is flow. Using clear sightlines and half-walls to offer glimpses between rooms, there’s a translucency to this single-storey space that makes it feel modest, low maintenance, and one with the landscape. A concrete shower is carved beneath a pocket of sky to simulate natural rainfall, and a brushed brass spout pours water into a sunken bath, which feels a little bit like the barn’s own hot spring. Even the glass walls and frameless corner windows are held in place by ‘floating’ timber pilasters, subtly elevated from the ground. So even whilst indoors, it feels like living amongst nature—an architectural microclimate reached by cut grass paths through cereal crops. It’s little wonder that ELLE Decoration dubbed it “the little house on the prairie.”
