Once home to hay bales, this spacious agricultural outhouse in the Bavarian countryside now provides modern, stylish shelter to one pioneering family
– three or four times the size of a typical village dwelling – hay barns in Germany’s mountainous Upper Bavaria region don’t have windows. So, when architect Stephanie Thatenhorst’s parents gave her a disused 120-year-old storehouse on their farm, an hour’s drive from Munich, her challenge was to introduce natural light to the property and magic comfort from its voluminous proportions.
‘I wanted to create a cosy and calm holiday and weekend home,’ she says of the project. After inserting large windows and dividing the expansive barn into two floors, containing three bedrooms and an open kitchen/dining area, Stephanie has moulded this empty shell into 200 square metres of family-friendly space.
As it’s one of just three houses that make up this hamlet, surrounded by fields, woodland, cows and snow-capped mountains, maintaining this home’s connection to the agricultural landscape was important. This meant keeping its original beams, plastering the walls with clay tinted with soft grey pigment, and covering the floor with untreated cement. Stephanie reused the barn’s wooden floorboards to build a staircase, but didn’t have enough to clad the ceiling, so she aged new timber in the region’s traditional way, with vinegar, to ensure that the planks would blend in.
No art adorns the walls, but Stephanie uses furniture – much of it made by local craftspeople – like jewellery, adding colour and interest to the sparse backdrop. ‘ With simple, plain surfaces and strong, characterful furniture, the challenge is to get the right doses of each,’ she explains. This balance has been achieved by selecting beautiful designs that fall into one of two distinct styles: humble, handmade items fashioned from natural materials and 1970s-inspired statement pieces, such as the sage green velvet Flexform sofa and brass chandelier by Dimore Studio.
If they aren’t out mountain biking around the lakes, Stephanie and her family can be found skiing down the mountains. Did she deliberately build the interior from hardwearing materials to suit their robust weekend activities? ‘Not really,’ she says, ‘I don’t really care when things get slightly stained or worn. It just makes them even nicer.’ stephanie-thatenhorst.com