In the rural landscape of Landsmeer, along the village ribbon of Van Beekstraat 252, lies a farmstead with a hay barn farmhouse set among expansive, marshy meadows with straight plot ditches, just beyond the edge of Amsterdam. The hay barn farmhouse is characteristic of this Waterland region: a worker's cottage, a connecting section, a cow barn and a hay barn, all built in sequence and against one another. Along the front ditch sits a small milk house at a dock inlet, once used for the transfer of milk by horse-drawn barge. An orchard at the front of the plot adorns the garden and provides fruit.

The design of this transformation — from a dilapidated hay barn farmhouse to a comfortable family home — responds to the characteristics of this regional building type: the worker's cottage along the village ribbon has been restored to its original appearance; the spatial quality of the long barn has been reinstated (the space had become cluttered with partition walls and the structure hidden from view); and the hay barn has been incorporated into the home while retaining the spatial character of a tall hay barn. The original sense of spatial experience has been made tangible once more, and the timber structures are again visible in their full beauty.

The design walks a tightrope: on one hand opening the living spaces to the beauty of the surrounding meadows, and on the other keeping the barn and hay barn legible in their characteristic enclosure. In the living barn, the deep wall piers create a relatively closed facade when seen from an oblique angle along the village ribbon. In the hay barn, the original overlapping timber boards have been rotated a quarter turn and fitted with operable elements at ground floor level — preserving the suggestion of a fully closed hay barn.

Hooihuisboerderij Landsmeer won the Arie Keppler Prize in 2020.