Customer Reviews

Barn: Preservation & Adaptation The Evolution of a Vernacular Icon

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Excellent book, if the other book, Barns: Living in Converted and Reinvented Spaces is the "ying", then this book is the "yang". A good inspirational design book if you're interested in reusing an old barn for modern day use and staying within the original design. The text is interesting and informative with the accompanying photos following along with the text. The pictures are overall excellent, sharp, clear, in detail and professionally done, with very very few exceptions. Some buildings are shown with structural drawings that help visualize the internal timber frame or stone structure with the accompanying photogaphs. The authors seems to be a die hard traditionalist, very critical and at times mildly insulting to designers that chose to remodel the old barns in the modern way and deviating from what the original builders did. But at times understanding that the modern style is a better fate than total destruction of a old old structure.

I was a bit disappointed to see this was a book written at the height of the barns-to-houses fad. With that said, this is a good book on the history of barns and the importance of their preservation. Barns in the book are repurposed as homes, community centers, shops; keeping their place in the American landscape.