A protected farm complex outside Bruges, Belgium, dating to 1661, gave Simon de Burbure architects two candidates for a family home, and the barn won out over the historic farmhouse. The barn is the largest and most characterful volume on the site, and making it the heart of the house inverts the usual hierarchy of a Flemish farmstead, where the barn stood below the dwelling in status despite its scale. An agricultural volume carries none of the compartmentalized rooms of a farmhouse, and that openness is what the contemporary home was built to use.
Under the large thatched roof, the living spaces open around the original oak framework, which stays exposed rather than hidden behind new surfaces. A thatched roof of this size needs a steep pitch to shed rain and carries a deep insulating layer, and keeping it meant preserving the barn’s original envelope largely intact. The historical structure set both the spatial organization and the material choices. A restrained palette of natural stone and wood in mineral tones sits against the weathered oak, held close in value so the new work reads as continuous with the frame rather than applied over it.
The oak was already weathered when the work began and continues to move with the seasons, and the stone and mineral-toned wood were chosen to hold their color beside it rather than compete for attention. Existing openings were preserved where possible and now carry sightlines through the interior and out toward the surrounding Flemish landscape.
Different levels organize the living spaces while keeping the full height and generous volume of the barn intact. The levels step through the single volume so the timber roof stays legible from below. A central freestanding staircase links them, and because it carries its own structure instead of leaning on the walls, the perimeter of the volume stays clear and the view up to the historic roof structure is never interrupted.
