A scattered array of ancient farm buildings has been converted into a pared-back modern dwelling, thanks to a comprehensive intervention by the architect Gianni Botsford. Set on the slopes of a shallow valley above the Isle of Wight’s River Medina, the Old Byre is home to Joseph Kohlmaier, a LondonMet lecturer and artistic director of Musarc, an experimental interdisciplinary choir.
Kohlmaier, who initiated the project with Botsford at the turn of the decade, co-owns the site with the economist and patron Simon Bishop, and this modest complex of structures is slated to become a small-scale artistic retreat in the years to come.
Step inside this contemporary barn conversion
The project had its genesis in Kohlmaier’s longstanding connection with the island. In addition to working with the Isle of Wight Architecture Centre at the start of the last decade, he’d also worked with Dow Jones Architects on The Sett, a refined modern house that set new standards for the area’s contemporary architecture.
Casting around for another, more flexible project, Kohlmaier stumbled on this site online, just south of East Cowes, down a long farm track. ‘It was an old cowshed, part rotting, a totally bonkers idea,’ he recalls. Crucially, there was Class Q planning permission in place – ensuring these agricultural spaces could be converted into a home.
The original low barns are arranged around a courtyard, with a larger eighteenth century timber barn forming the third side which remains in the ownership of the adjoining farm. ‘I started to talking to Gianni, who had been involved in setting up the Studio in the Woods [with Piers Taylor, Kate Darby and Meredith Bowles] ,’ he says, ‘we came up with the idea of leaving the barns alone and wrapping them instead.’ The project started on site in June 2021.
Whilst the basic form and position of the barns are unchanged, their appearance has been transformed by the addition of translucent wall panels and a corrugated fibre cement roof, keeping the cold out but allow a softly filtered light, and even rural sounds, to permeate the living spaces.
New concrete floor slabs were poured throughout, incorporating underfloor heating, and there are no conventional windows; just large glass doors that open the living spaces up to the internal courtyard. All this gives the Old Byre a very industrial character from the outside, with its high-tech walls and roofing hugging the slightly lopsided earlier barn.
‘All the walls appear to glow from within,’ Kohlmaier says. ‘It’s minimal complexity with an agricultural aesthetic.’ Inside, the reliance on humble materials continues, with sleeping areas and bathrooms formed from plywood and pine partitions, all with full-height doors with integral grips to do away with the need for handles. The original steel structure of the taller barn has been kept, as have the timber roof beams in the other barn.
The former is a large open plan space, complete with a kitchen constructed from a Swiss steel shelving system. A separate utility room is tucked away around the back, behind a spruce clad partition. The space is generous and open, scattered with pot plants.
To reach the bedrooms there is no choice but to walk through the courtyard. ‘Originally we wanted to connect it with a roof,’ says Kohlmaier. ‘I like comfort, but for me that means hearing and feeling things and not being totally enclosed. That’s why the transparency is important.’
While the living space re-uses a more contemporary steel framed barn, the study and bedrooms across the courtyard are contained in a much older structure, dating back to the nineteenth century. This L-shaped building starts with Kohlmaier’s book-lined study, then a long corridor that flanks the external wall and leads round to the main bedroom. Some of the books came from the library of the late architect Colin St John Wilson, architect of the British Library.
Between them are two cell-like sleeping ‘boxes’ and a bathroom, all furnished and finished in a minimal, highly ascetic style, with the exposed original beams above and a new concrete floor below. Kohlmaier designed the study desk, and the shelving comprises classic Remploy units. ‘It is what it is,’ he says. ‘It’s not about precision but about the integrity of the thought and the relationship between old and new.’
Botsford’s other work, particularly in London, has a precision and perfection that’s in another league thanks to much larger budgets, but Kohlmaier cites the ‘local adaptation’ approach Botsford took in his work in Costa Rica as being more in tune with the Old Byre.
The house is destined to become a ‘shared space’, in Kohlmaier’s words. ‘I’m opening it up to writers, artists, musicians,’ he explains. ‘The Old Byre will be a place where things happen.’ The self-contained nature of the structure, with its rough finishes, rich original textures and quasi-industrial detailing combines with the soundscape filtering through the translucent walls, from wind to wildlife, creating an inspirational sense of retreat from the outside world, helped too by the island location.
There’s a burgeoning sense of creative community in the area, with an adjoining barn being converted by Studio Weave. For Kohlmaier, the building has been a true collaborative project with Gianni Botsford, a space that extends his field of research and teaching in places like Field Studies, an interdisciplinary summer school, and Musarc. ‘I’m interested in the social dynamic of architecture,’ he concludes. ‘This building is not resolved, not cosy and not simple.’
