For Framestudio founder Chad DeWitt, this new barn recalls the agricultural buildings of his childhood on his family’s Northern California ranch: robust, utilitarian and invariably dark. Here, the familiar form is reworked around natural light.
Two prefabricated steel gabled volumes contain car storage, a workshop and loft, with an Airstream sheltered between them. Taking a cue from the Eames House, standard industrial components are made particular through a translucent polycarbonate roof that washes the interiors with diffuse daylight. The result retains the economy and utility of an agricultural building while correcting the one thing DeWitt remembered most clearly: the darkness inside.