Park Corner Barn / McLaren Excell

Architects: McLaren Excell
Area: N/A
Year: 2011
Photography: Courtesy of McLaren Excell
City: Henley on Thames
Country: United Kingdom

Park Corner Barn residential building designed by McLaren Excell in the Chiltern Hills, completed in 2011, transformed a historic agricultural structure into a contemporary living space. The renovation emphasized open, light-filled areas with a Scandinavian feel, accommodating the client’s passion for classical music and books.

Set among beech-wooded farmland high in the Chiltern Hills, Park Corner Barn was originally part of a neighboring farm estate and used as a threshing and cattle barn until the mid-1990s. Built from traditional brick and flint in the late eighteenth century, the barn was enlarged to twice its original size in 1864.

In 2009, the client purchased the barn, twelve years after its initial residential conversion, with the intent of stripping it back to its basic structure and starting anew. The goal was to create light, open spaces with a Scandinavian feel, accommodating the client’s collections of classical music and books, and providing flexible living spaces for varying numbers of guests.

The first conversion in 1997 focused on maximizing the number of rooms over two floors, neglecting the building’s material and spatial qualities. The exterior also had untapped potential. Undoing much of the previous work was crucial. A limited budget necessitated careful allocation of funds, leaving some of the existing layout unchanged while taking much of the building back to its agricultural origins.

The original layout of twenty-five rooms, with nineteen on the ground floor, created a maze of corridors and landings. The proposal significantly reduced the number of rooms, allowing the building’s scale and materiality to breathe.

This involved extensive restructuring and servicing, including removing structural walls, floors, and beams, and introducing concealed steelwork and structural timber framing. Deterioration of the timber elements in the older part of the barn required replacement of the primary beams.

The changes created two large living areas. The South end of the barn became a vast double-height living room, extending to the rafters and gable ends. The kitchen, previously isolated, was opened up to form part of a communal living area. The North end saw the removal of four en-suite bedrooms, making space for a dedicated library and music listening room, meeting the client’s specific needs.

Working with rooms un-domestic in origin and scale required elements with a constructed quality to fit the space.

The South gable elevation, made from oversized solid oak sections, provides solidity and rhythm. The fireplace and chimney are a massive limestone composition with a tapering lime-plastered flue. The moveable staircase to the secondary upstairs accommodation, weighing one tonne, is fabricated from black steel with a rough textured finish. The oak doors and joinery are over-scaled to match their surroundings.

The design throughout the barn is simple and contemporary, with a limited palette of materials ensuring consistency and calm: white-oiled oak, Bath limestone, Italian basalt, and natural fiber floor coverings. This approach allows the original fabric of the barn to remain the interior’s predominant feature.