Re-appropriating a gabled roof typical to Wisconsin farmhouse vernacular, the building is an addition to an existing barn. It includes a commercial kitchen and communal dining area for the education of farm to table eating.

A sense of place.

Site and history is interwoven in the sense of long standing rural architecture. In the case of the Miley Barn restoration, time is appropriated through the regeneration of form and material first and foremost to tell what might have been a long forgotten story. The Barn holds in its walls, the mortar of family and friendship, the shared meals and processes of growing and preparing them. So, it is only fit that the next chapter is that of education, to weave its own narrative of awareness to health and consumption for a future generation to tell their own stories.

The design reappropriates the gabled roof forms that anchor the many surrounding farm properties, likewise, forming a relationship to the existing by sitting softly within the landscape. Its transparencies frame the trees beyond and captures sunlight throughout the day to flood the spaces with natural glow. The materials weather and harmonize through the changing colors of the season as it’s spaces serve to educate and delight through preparing, making and sharing the experience of local food. A refined and open plan allows connection between the spaces; on one side, a glass entry leads through to an exterior dining and patio that sits in the light of sunsets, on the other, an open work space with exposed trusses and the warmth of wood.

The project forms a symbiotic relationship with the site and surrounding gardens, as if it was there in time past when the Miley Family tethered their own belonging to a sense of place.