House in a Barn by Artel31 reconsiders the traditional barn conversion through the adaptation of a former silage barn in West Oxfordshire, England. Rather than treating the existing structure as a container for domestic accommodation, the project works with the barn’s steel portal frame, generous volume, and agricultural character to create a family home set within the retained frame.

In England, the reuse of rural buildings has long been shaped by planning policy and by a broader culture of adaptation rather than replacement. While historic stone barns remain closely associated with the rural landscape, portal-frame agricultural buildings, whose steel structures create large, open spans, offer a different set of possibilities. Their large spans and simple structures can support contemporary forms of rural living, including more fluid relationships between interior rooms, sheltered external spaces, the surrounding landscape, and changing environmental conditions.

Carving a home from an existing frame

House in a Barn is a Class Q conversion, using a planning route in England that allows suitable agricultural buildings to be adapted as homes. Artel31, acting as both architect and design-and-build contractor, transformed the former silage barn into a family home. 

Unlike conventional barn conversions, which often repurpose the full volume for internal accommodation, the design takes a subtractive approach, carving back space to create a dwelling within the barn’s existing steel portal frame. The generous volume of the former agricultural structure is used to create a sequence of threshold spaces outside the thermal envelope, blurring the boundary between inside and out. These zones offer varying levels of shelter, temper environmental conditions, and maintain a direct connection to the surrounding landscape.

Artel31 describes these as ‘negative spaces, defined by absence rather than presence, where the act of subtraction creates new meaning and function — these voids shape the experience of the home, allowing light, air, and time to animate the spaces in ever-changing ways.’

A protective second skin

The existing barn acts as a protective second skin, selectively peeled back to introduce natural light and ventilation. Portions of the cladding have been removed to create a hit-and-miss brise-soleil, reducing the risk of overheating in summer while retaining the agricultural character of the structure.

Within this outer shell, a breathable timber-frame building was constructed. Salvaged materials from the original structure were reused as cladding, maintaining a visual connection to the barn’s agricultural past. The retained frame provides shelter, shade, and enclosure, while the new domestic spaces occupy the barn more selectively.

Arrival and occupation

The arrival sequence begins with a reflective pool, marking the transition into the home. The pool also bounces light onto the underside of the existing roof structure, reducing any sense of heaviness and drawing attention to the scale of the retained barn.

A double-height entry void, lit through translucent polycarbonate, introduces the new accommodation within the existing volume. The main access corridor is lined with a multi-layered polycarbonate wall, which draws natural light into the interior while contributing to the insulation strategy. On the ground floor, the main living spaces extend into a semi-outdoor kitchen and patio, reinforcing the relationship between interior, threshold, and landscape.

Upstairs, the bedrooms open towards long views across the surrounding fields. A projecting office space punctuates the barn’s facade, making visible the relationship between the original structure and the new insertions.

Material reuse and environmental strategy

The environmental strategy combines high levels of insulation, airtight and vapour-open timber-framed construction, and passive solar gain to reduce reliance on artificial heating and cooling. Window size and orientation were developed using Passivhaus software, daylight modelling, and wind studies.

Material reuse from the existing farmyard, supplemented by locally sourced materials, helped reduce waste and embodied carbon across the project. Reclaimed concrete silage panels have been incorporated in a non-structural role, acting as spatial dividers and visual reminders of the barn’s agricultural past. Exposed concrete flooring and reused concrete walls contribute thermal mass within the scheme. The original precast concrete panels and steel frame are also left exposed.

Elsewhere, railway sleepers that had been stored in the barn were turned on end to form a garden fence, while old staddle stones from a former granary were reused to support a timber pergola.

Through this approach, House in a Barn shifts the former agricultural structure towards domestic use while retaining the spatial presence of the barn. The result is a quietly inventive reworking of the building’s existing volume, programme, and environmental relationship.