Hop Barn, Rye, East Sussex

RIBA Stage: 0-3 (Design & Planning)

Sector: Developer

Consultants: Wilbury Planning (Planning Consultant)

This design turned a redundant barn into a five-bedroom home, with the brief driven by increasing the land's value ahead of resale rather than a fixed idea of what the finished building should look like.

We took a contemporary approach to the design rather than the traditional domestic aesthetic that was not a suitable fit for this particular building and site.

Getting there meant negotiating directly with planners and ecologists to bring their requirements into a single, coherent scheme rather than treating them as separate hurdles, work we carried out alongside a planning consultant with a strong track record delivering barn conversions in Northiam and Rye.

As architects with a track record of securing consents on barn conversion including Class Q conversions, we know a redundant agricultural building only realises its value when the design, planning and ecological considerations are resolved together, not in isolation.