Deteriorating, century-old oak trees destined for the scrapheap have been turned into a lovely barn in the Netherlands. Dutch architects at Hilberink Bosch Architecten put the structure together at their farm south of Amsterdam, using traditional building techniques and materials collected from the area.
The old oak trees had come to be in such poor condition that they needed to be cleared, and selling them off to a paper factory was the obvious option. But architects Annemariken Hilberink and Geert Bosch decided to get creative instead.
They sourced some additional oak trunks from a nearby estate and found themselves with enough lumber to build an asymmetrical multipurpose workspace. The timber was prepared onsite with a mobile saw mill, cut into trusses and beams for the supports, with short pieces of oak cleaved into shingles for the roof.
According to the architects, the toughness of the untreated oak will see the roof last for years, while the sturdiest sections from the trees' cores were sawn into planks for the facade.
The heavy use of wood is mixed and matched with concrete benching inside. There is also an open garage space beneath the steeply gabled roof, and the leftover lumber has been chopped up for firewood and stashed away under under the alcove.
Completed in January this year, the space intended to serve as a storage room, conference room, office and workshop. Have look around in the gallery.
