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"How
I got involved" - Damien Blower, Planning Architect
‘In
2000 and out of the blue, came a call from a young man, requesting
a visit to our drawing office to talk about a difficult planning
problem on a Listed barn nearby that they wanted to convert
into a family home. We always enjoy hosting people in our
office and, appropriately, we work from an old barn that we
ourselves converted in the 90’s. Moreover, this happened
to be just the sort of project we love doing and wanted to
do more of and, I think, are good at.
A few days
later, in walked a young couple and the father of the husband,
who it transpired, owned the property on which the barn stood
and who lived next door – they were keeping it in the
family, and why not? I sensed in the husband a confident,
bright yet purposeful character, in the father a passive but
generous formality and in the wife, an extroverted and enthusiastic
charisma. However auspicious a first meeting, they didn’t
give much away of their dreams or desires for the barn and
it was left to me to tease this out of them, show them some
of our work and a site visit to a Listed barn conversion next
to our office.
I make a point of working with people I like and respect and
who, in their turn, respect what we do. Showing them the project
next door was a revelation, as I could see their eyes light
up at the way we had wrapped a kitchen in a wall, which curved
away and through the oak beams. I explained that the curved
smooth plaster is meant to weave in and out of the old and
Listed oak structure of the barn, contrasting with it and
setting both the new and the old in a delicate balance; of
soft and hard; smooth and rough; light and dark; linear and
organic; solid and ethereal. This is an ancient aesthetic
device of which I, like other artists, will never tire.
Several days later, came the call to say that they had chosen
us to design the project and manage the tricky Planning application.’ Damien Blower, architect. February 2002, Farnham
Stedman
Blower additional background
Stedman Blower are a leading design-focused architectural
practice based in a converted barn near Farnham in Surrey.
They have been awarded and cited for excellence in residential
and conservation work by the Times Newspaper, Country Life,
Surrey CC, Civic Trust and the Royal Institutes of British
Architects (RIBA) and Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Their work,
widely published, continues to explore themes expressed in
the ‘Threshing Barn’; the use of traditional materials
in contemporary ways; the sculpting of internal space and
volumes; the building in and as landscape.
Damien Blower, design director and principal, trained in London
and Los Angeles, where he worked for Frank Gehry, before taking
over the family practice of Stedman & Blower, first founded
in 1895. www.stedmanblower.co.uk
  
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The Milking
Parlour, Farnham, Surrey. Grade 2 Listed barn conversion
1999
Stedman
Blower
Dairy Studio, Runfold St. Georges
Badshot Lea
Farnham Surrey
tel:
01252 7783574
fax: 01252 783575
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