Barn House

Project info:
Project title: Barn house
Area (inside space): 16+44m2
Completion year: 2017
Location: Lillehammer, Norway
Architect: Jon Danielsen Aarhus
Architect website: www.jdaa.no
Architect e-mail: jon@jdaa.no
Photographs: Knut Bry

SMALL HOUSE FOR TWO LADIES
Kristin and Ruth have been together for 41 years. Both active career-women throughout their adult lives. Today they´re entering retirement together. But they have no intention of making it an inactive one.

Their home of the last 25 years consists of a main building over 100 years old and listed, and a large garden. Now they also have a new multipurpose annex, where there once stood a rundown outbuilding, with disintegrating foundations, and strongly modified during the post-war era to accommodate the functions of garage, but also listed in the same way as the main building. A delicate situation for any new building.

The strategy for the replacement building – the new annex – was to keep the old position and proportions of the old building, and use some of the basic principles of the traditional Norwegian outbuilding, more specifically the Norwegian barn. Like most barns it has a post and beam wood construction, albeit with bolted joints, more suited for a modern build and -craft. It also has the classic barn-bridge entering the first floor at the gable wall.

This house is for different activities and functions. Kristin and Ruth wants to spend their retirement doing what they love. Ruth paints and sculpts, and tends to her plants. Kristin is a technician at heart, and fixes what needs mending. She enjoys staying physically active, and during winter she goes cross-country skiing in the forests and mountains surrounding Lillehammer. They need room for these pursuits: for storage and for work. They have, themselves, made most of the interior furniture. Shelves, counters and workbenches were made from the scaffolding for the build.

The ground floor has a garage and storage, plus a workshop room which also houses Ruth´s plants during the winter. The first floor is an atelier, which also has all the functions of a guest house for friends and family; children and grandchildren, or as a separate dwelling unit for rental purposes.
The construction consists of five glulam timber frames, on which everything else hangs. The rough and exposed wood construction makes it easily understandable, and useful when making customized solutions and additions with changing needs.

The aesthetic of this building is the result of activities, first and foremost. It is also an attempt to use a traditional way of building, in order for the architecture to sit well in an old and sensitive built environment.

Spring seems to come late this year in Lillehammer. But soon it will be all light, flowers and green. For Kristin and Ruth the changing seasons are a part of their life rhythm. Two very different ladies, together in an ever-changing environment, as their life story continues.