During my internship with Mieke Vink at Lüchinger Architects, I and my fellow intern Thomas Zhang, collaborated on a project to transform a historic barn into a liveable house. This project involved designing a barn, originally used for cows, with a characteristic black wooden facade and thatched roof, into a home for an elderly woman.

The barn had long been used as a garage and storage. Luckily, most of its wooden columns and beams were still intact, providing a framework for the transformation. Mieke's vision was to preserve as much of the existing structure as possible, allowing it to carry the light facade structure. In the centre of the home, a “hearth” would be established. This hearth would be the core of all the essential infrastructure of the home, the fireplace, the kitchen, the bathroom and the stairs to the second floor. This core became one of the main aspects of the concept, designed to rise through the sentre of the building allowing spaces to naturally emerge around it. 

Our role as interns focused on modeling and design the spaces through modelmaking. Iterating on the layout of the core to ensure it to fit within the existing wooden structure. We began the process by analyzing and understanding the existing wooden structure, creating a model of the wooden beams and colums to use as a base for designing the core.

This project was an invaluable learning experience.