Open Living Concept in Barn-House Architecture: Single-Family House Case Studies

Abstract

’Barn house’ architecture can be presumed as a style or trend in contemporary architecture. The term ‘barn-house’ refers to a house that architecturally refers to barn with a simple, longitudinal form with pitched roof. Originally, barns were converted to houses for practical reasons. Later on, the design aspect was getting more important and any house or any barn were not enough, and so it turned to be a style which can be described as ‘designed barn-house’. The idea appears to be well-recognized: many built houses and house designs represent that style. Also, several online blogs on that subject have been created and published dozens of examples. We may presume that many contemporary architects have either already designed or are aware of designing a barn-house. The reason for that is mostly simplicity of architecture, and lack of details which are common in contemporary architecture. 3 case studies of barn-type house designs have been presented in the article. All of them have been designed by the authors. All the concepts have been designed using synthetic models: physical and virtual. The open space concept can be recognized in all the three case studies: the interior layout seems to be more important than the exterior in that kind of architecture. The authors conclude that some uniform rules can be recognized in barn-type architecture design. However, many concepts have gone far beyond the original barn-house idea. The question is whether that trend can be presumed as distinctive?