Photos of the converted barn in Gabillou

Thibaut Devulder

I got a chance over the summer to visit the fully converted stone barn that we designed in Gabillou, in south-west France.

This 19th century agricultural building was transformed into a stunning home between 2007 and 2018, by our self-builder clients themselves, who lived in the building over the course of the conversion process, thanks to our phased construction design approach.

With an amazing attention to detail and a lot of enthusiasm, the couple has now become expert self-builders and joiners, already looking forward to a new conversion project to use their skills!

Below is a collection of pictures I took of the finished barn this August. Click on the pictures for a full-screen slideshow!

 
(Click on the photo to enlarge the slideshow...)
Looking down at the half-floor lounge from the upper floor
Looking up the lightwell from the living-room
The new wall opening to the garden, from the living-room
Stairs up to the half-floor lounge, and down to the guest suite, from the living-room
Glass railing detail from the lounge
Looking toward the kitchen and upper floor, from the lounge
The lounge
The kitchen and upper floor, from the lounge
Roof over the lounge
Detail of the lime mortar pointing of the stone wall
Looking up the south gable, from the lounge
The historical timber structure, supporting the new roof, insulated with wood fiber
Custom staircase, built by our clients
Looking up the staircase to the upper floor
Home office on the sunken landing of the upper floor
View from the master bedroom, past the light well over the children's bedrooms
Looking up from one of the children's bedroom
South gable, with the new opening to the lounge
South east corner of the barn
Lavender along the south gable
Outside details of the workshop door
South east corner, with the separate entrance to the guest suite
New workshop door
The entrance door
Detail of the guest suite entrance
The main terrace to the east, with the new openings

Dreaming of converting a historical building into your new home?

Paws Project : Doggy wellness centre in an agricultural barn conversion

Tom Hughes

Our conversion of a former cow shed into a canine wellness centre for The Paw Project is complete.

We opted to keep the new development low and spreading to create a welcoming outdoor sheltered space for owners and their dogs. This lack of formality reduces stress for the dogs, giving them space to mingle and to see where they are going.

Two main enclosed spaces house an office and acupuncture studio, and a grooming and treatment area. An open barn-like space is hidden behind a sliding gate for use for agility and behavioural classes.

A seating area and sales point/event space are located under a protective canopy, creating an intimate scale under the soaring barn roof. These features, along with the enclosed spaces, screen the rear of the barn from view.

A phased development plan means that there is space to expand the facilities in the future, whilst presenting a complete environment to visitors in the short term.

Client: @the_pawproject Design & build contractor: Sheltered Spaces

Canine Wellness Centre under construction

Tom Hughes

We are very pleased to see our Canine Wellness Centre project under construction by Sheltered Spaces.

Can’t wait to see it come to life (our dogs are looking forward to a spa day too!).

 






Portfolio project
Vertical living in a former boiler house

Tom Hughes
A pod-like extension provides services, daylight and ventilation.

A pod-like extension provides services, daylight and ventilation.

This intriguing little project is now under construction in Nottingham. Our client’s town house occupies part of a former builder’s joinery workshop in a Conservation Area. Entry to the main house is through the ground floor of a free-standing former boiler house, complete with an 11m high brick chimney. Our challenge was to re-purpose this special, tiny building to contain a home working office and guest accommodation.

We stripped out and redesigned the boiler house interior to fit a mezzanine level under the opened-up roof structure, and used ‘space saver’ stairs to maximise the floor area. The tiny floor plan is offset by an impressive vertical connection between the levels- with everything needed for occupation accessed off a vertical circulation route culminating in the bed platform.

Careful organisation of the section creates space for a mezzanine level

Careful organisation of the section creates space for a mezzanine level

The temptation is to cut lots of holes in an existing building to let in light, provide ventilation and create new service routes, but in this case we decided to preserve the integrity of the boiler house by adding a highly-serviced pod to the exterior. This provides the necessary service connections, and brings light and ventilation to the interior. The addition is anonymous, in keeping with the industrial heritage of the building whilst creating intrigue and mystery of its own.

Design Team:

Need some creative input to transform an old historical building into a living space?

Our self-builder clients share hands-on experience

Thibaut Devulder
“Appointing an architect has been one of the most valuable expenses of the project. I guess that it varies with the architecture practice you are working with, but for our project, 2hD have worked perfectly and have created a home totally adapted to our lifestyle and our constraints. Nothing to do with our original basic plans, nothing at all. Everything was taken into accounts: daylight, connections between the spaces, their volumes and their different levels...”
— Béranger Hau, client and self-builder for our Gabillou barn conversion project

Our client building the new staircase of the converted barn, using massive oak boards sourced from a local sawmill. 

With now ten years of experience as self-builder, transforming a old stone barn in Dordogne (France) into their dream home, our clients Béranger and Mélanie look back at their amazing achievements.

Over these years they have realised virtually all aspects of the building process themselves — from groundworks and water recycling system, to carpentry and furniture making. They have now decided to give back to the self-building community by sharing all their experience in a great article on their project blog (in French), touching on subjects as varied as project planning, finance and tips on how to not hurt your back on a building site...

2hD started to work as architects on this project as soon as Béranger and Mélanie purchased the run-down stone barn, back in 2006. And we have worked hand-in-hand with them ever-since: helping them define a solid project brief, developing sketch design alternatives, selecting adapted and affordable technical solutions, but also creating custom 3D models of the barn to guide them through the self-build construction process.

Amazingly attentive to details and quality, they are now proud owners of a stunning home, as well as experienced carpenters, plumbers, furniture makers and SketchUp 3D modellers! And they even received an award for their work...

Discussing the usefulness of working with architects in self-build projects, this is what our client Béranger has to say:

“In the end, even if your project is not as large as ours and does not (legally) require an architect, we strongly advise you to appoint one. You will have all the drawings, and thus a definite vision of what your home can be. And this brings a lot in terms of motivation and anticipation.”
— Béranger Hau, client and self-builder for our Gabillou barn conversion project

You can read the full article on our client's project blog.

InPhase warehouse

Tom Hughes

We're delighted to be working for InPhase Media Services on the initial stages of a warehouse conversion project. The site, near Nottingham station, will house two large film and photography studios and state of the art facilities including a massive infinity wall.

Head over to the InPhase website or see their facebook or twitter presence for updates as the project evolves.

InPhase Media concept sketch

Portfolio project
Gaarder Gården

Thibaut Devulder

Our design for a mixed development project in Eidsvoll, Norway, has been granted planning permission and work has started on site in Sundet, the historical centre of Eidsvoll, on the bank of the Vorma river.

View of the existing building in context from the riverside theatre 

View of the existing building from south

Since its original construction, this building has seen its use change several times, from textile shop to (most recently) an indian restaurant, with each conversion bringing its new remodelling and awkward lean-to extensions added to the existing log timber building, further blurring the old and the new into a cacophonic mix of styles and functions.

We were approached by the client to reorganise the building into a mixed use development, including retail spaces on the ground floor and rental apartments in the upper floor. The nearby open courtyard — a great asset in the town's developing centre — was originally left disused next to the existing building. Realising the potential, we proposed to integrate it into the scope of the project, to define an attractive outdoor breakout space that opens up towards the retail spaces and the new apartments above.

Located next to the riverside and neighbouring a listed old dairy building, it was essential to preserve a sense of scale between the proposed higher density development and the street level — masterplanned to become one of Sundet main pedestrian axis.

To achieve this, the balconies and common roof terrace serving the seven apartments help to break up with the different built volumes on the site and create an interplay of different levels. The courtyard frames the view to the old dairy building facade from the street, sheltering technical areas out of sight from the street (waste storage and heat pump exchangers).

The palette of materials also help to clearly define the original part of the old building from its rebuilt extensions. The main body of the building will be reclad with its original light boarding, with roof form and windows restored based on old photography. In contrast, all rebuilt and new parts have flat roof and are wrapped in dark stained timber rainscreen.

The first phase of the project is now under construction, including the remodelling of the main building and reconstruction of the extension, to host a retail space on the ground floor and four apartments on the first and loft floors.

Phase 2 already well underway in the Gabillou barn

Thibaut Devulder

The award-winning self-building clients for our barn conversion in south-western France have started to build the second phase of the internal timber structure in the historic stone building.

This structure will support the upper level of the barn where the bedrooms will be located, as well as a balcony over the full-height interior space. Underneath, the large open kitchen will face the living space, hiding the utility rooms and the garage/workshop behind it.

The construction is following our original detailed design (above), using a post-and-beam framework and lightweight timber I-beams, to create an internal timber structure that could be easily assembled by self-builders without lifing equipment. The large timber structure was also designed to stand independently of the stone walls and existing roof structure, so that minimum intervention would be required on the historic structure.

Prior to construction, our design was checked by a French specialist in timber structure (Equation Bois, based in neighbouring town Périgueux), who worked with the clients and us to prepare the detailed specification of the structural elements.

The first phase of this internal timber structure, completed recently, created a temporary accommodation space inside the barn for our clients, where they will live until the rest of the barn is converted. Later on, it will be used as a comfortable bedroom for their future Bed & Breakfast, with the main living-room for the house above it.

You can follow the progress of the project on our clients' blog.

Portfolio project
A barn conversion in Dordogne

Thibaut Devulder

We were delighted when Mélanie and Béranger approached us to help them convert an old stone barn in south-west France into their new family home. This was the perfect project to combine our interests in sustainability, self-build construction and conservation.

Sketch perspective of the converted barn, looking across the main living space

We worked closely with our clients to design a beautiful but affordable house, with a flexible layout and minimal environmental footprint. We brought together the different requirements of their family project, unveiling the stunning character of the 200 year-old stone building, while responding to the practical requirements of its new use.

The 200 year-old barn, before the conversion 

Preserving and enhancing

Our initial task was to carry out a detailed measured survey of the existing stone barn and a careful condition survey to establish the need for repair and conservation work, so that our new intervention could fit around and preserve the old wood and stone structure. This also helped us understand the key views, approaches and landscape requirements for this conversion project, to enhance its integration in the surrounding nature.

The vast and the intimate

We wanted to preserve what we experienced on our first visit to the original barn: an impressive feeling of spaciousness with a peaceful daylight filtering softly through the fallen roof tiles... This meant establishing a clear hierarchy of indoor spaces, so that the whole range of specific functions of the barn's new domestic use could be accommodated without overcrowding the attractive indoor volumes.

The barn under construction: new insulated roof and repointed stone walls.

The other challenge was to introduce natural daylight deep into a previously dark agricultural building. To respect the traditional architectural topology of the stone barn, we concentrated the new openings into few, larger light wells: they reflected off the light surface finishes and created contrasts between social spaces — opening up to the hight roof structure — and the more intimate private rooms. This also promoted effective natural ventilation across the barn in summer.

We chose to keep as much as possible of the meter-thick stone walls in the interior, and insulated the new roof cover and floor slabs. Hovering within the stone volume is a secondary timber structure that weaves itself around the oak roof trusses, clearly identifying the new from the old and contrasting the textured historical materials with the contemporary new ones.

 

Harnessing the site’s resources

Carefully balancing the client’s lifestyle choices, budget and aspirations, we designed and implemented design sustainability measures that we knew would work and could gracefully integrate with the historical building. This meant low-tech solutions with proven track record, that used resources readily available around the site.

Making the most of the barn's extraordinary thermal mass, we incorporating radiant underfloor heating in the newly insulated floor slabs and connecting it to a central wood boiler, running on locally harvested wood logs.

The vast roof was also ideal for rainwater collection, and the system we designed made the barn virtually independent for all water needs (including drinking water!). And while re-landscaping the surrounding agricultural land, we designed a complete waste treatment system based on reed-beds, a completely natural process that would purify all waste water from the family — and even transforming it into clean water for their new natural swimming pond!

Client, user, builder...

A key feature of this project was that the clients would manage the building process themselves. We carefully phased the construction to make sure that the house would be comfortable and accommodating during the whole process, which may take years to complete. We also attentively considered the family’s cashflow over timeand their future aspirations and projects (the house will eventually double as a guesthouse).

So the new home is designed from the start into a series of stages that will evolve with the family, all the way from a space to park a caravan on the site! At each building stage, the plan and structural system work together to create comfortable habitable spaces, building in flexibility as the work progresses, so that later disruption can be avoided.

The different stages of the construction, each inhabitable and addressing the specific needs of the growing family (click to enlarge). 

 

Sharing knowledge and experience

One of our "assembly manuals", explaining to the clients how to build the self-standing internal timber structure (click to enlarge)

We extensively used SketchUp to communicate with our self-building clients, providing them with updated detailed 3D model of the design. Since they had no former experience in carpentry, we also created a series of clear and user-friendly visualisations to explain how the different parts of the structure fitted together with simple assembling techniques and components that could be lifted and handled with limited equipment and muscle-power!

Rewarding their amazing building skills and painstaking attention to details, our clients were even elected in 2012 Self-Builders of the Year by the French magazine Autoconstruction!

The construction of the barn is completed and our clients are sharing in details the day-by-day progress of this project, and their self-building experience, on their project blog. 

“Thanks to 2hD for their outstanding work!
With the 3D model, we can browse, move and observe every corner of the building: a true manual that allows us to reproduce on site what has been imagined by the architects.”
— Béranger Hau, client and self-builder
More articles about the Gabillou barn conversion:
Photos of the converted barn in Gabillou
Photos of the converted barn in Gabillou
Our self-builder clients share hands-on experience
A visit to the self-built barn
A visit to the self-built barn
Phase 2 already well underway in the Gabillou barn
Phase 2 already well underway in the Gabillou barn
A barn conversion in Dordogne
Gabillou barn clients voted self-builders of the year!
Self-build timber structure
Self-build timber structure
Rejointoyage
Rejointoyage
Finishing touch
Finishing touch
2hD at Lincoln Architecture Society
2hD at Lincoln Architecture Society
Chapeau et bottes

Tune house nearing completion

Thibaut Devulder

Our house conversion project on the bank of Mjøsa lake, 90km north of Oslo, is nearing completion. Interior work progressed well these last few weeks and, with the winter now receeding, the exterior insulation and landscaping will soon start. Great work by our client and builder Chriss Brohaug.

Self-build timber structure

Thibaut Devulder

The interior restoration of our two-century-old barn in southern France is almost completed, with all its stone walls repointed and the ceiling of the new insulated roof painted. Credits to our self-builder clients for their amazing work!

The erection of the internal timber structure has also started. We planned the layout of the converted barn so that interior work could be organised in three independent phases: after this initial phase, our clients will be able to start inhabiting the barn, while continuing to work on the rest of the internal structure. Eventually, this first part of the structure will serve as a bedroom for their future guesthouse.

We designed this self-supported structure to be easy to construct by the self-builder couple, without requiring any special equipment or tools. As our clients had no previous experience in carpentry, we produced a package of user-friendly construction drawings that clearly explained how things fitted together. 

More photos of the project on our clients' blog...