In conversation with John Pawson: A study of light and materials

Looking at your residence, Home Farm, how did you embody this philosophy?
JP: It was an intensely personal project. And, when the client and architect are the same person, it becomes both more straightforward and more complex. Every project I have ever made is a manifesto of the work and the thinking behind it, but with an undertaking like Home Farm, every detail becomes an obsession. The only real constraints are those of time, money, tenacity of spirit and of course, the patience of your family!

For me, a sense of ease and stillness is essential to feeling at home in a place, and when I move around my home, the changing quality of the light is a constant sensory and emotional pleasure. However, in the end, the home is defined by people — the family and friends that fill it.

How did you bridge the gap between a contemporary interior and a historical 17th-century farmhouse to suit the needs of a modern lifestyle?
JP: Initially, when we visited, my first impression was that everything looked dauntingly derelict. The place had been occupied by the large, local farming family for the past seventy years, and the only electrical outlet was a pre-war, three-pin bakelite socket. At the same time, through the curtains of cobwebs, I could see the potential for the different elements to form new connections — hence, we joined the farmhouse with the in-line stone barn, stables and hayloft to create a volume of nearly 50 metres in length. From the beginning, the idea was to insert unequivocally modern elements into this idiosyncratic accretion of structures, spaces and surfaces that would create interesting junctions between old and new while ensuring no uncomfortable historicising of the place.

How do you create a sense of atmosphere and well-being in your home while maintaining a minimal aesthetic?
JP: I’ve never seen any contradiction between architectural minimalism and making places warm and inviting. The entirety of Home Farm is configured as a series of comfortable gathering spaces that work for larger numbers of people when we have family or friends over, but also for Catherine and me when it’s just the two of us.

Your home consists of a few carefully chosen pieces of furniture. How do you decide on the final pieces and what should have a place?
JP: I like furniture that neither disappears in space nor distracts the eye, breaking the sense of seamlessness. In this space, a growing proportion of the furniture we have is pieces I have designed myself, some of them created specifically with Home Farm in mind. However, I’d never want to get to the position where I’d designed everything, as it’s important to have a mix of other hands and other sensibilities.