8sewing

Quilting with glass, cedar and fir: a workshop and studio in Rossland, BC Robert Barnstone

I t is unusual to think about architecture in the same terms as we would think about making a quilt — sewing together patches of unrelated materials, often scrap, in a collage-like juxtaposition — but quilting describes the ways in which the workshop/studio project in Rossland, B C was designed and constructed. The project took a ramshackle, collapsing old truck workshop and trans- formed it into a winterized, habitable artist’s studio. The original structure was a wood post and beam, wood clad shed with fourteen-foot high ceilings, a flat roof, mostly dirt floors, and two plywood panel barn doors on the front. Many of the rafters and much of the exterior wood siding was rotten; the entire building was leaning at a 10-degree angle to one side. The first challenge was to decide what could be salvaged and then to decide how to incorporate new construction into the existing structure. The technique was, from the start, the sewing together of old and new, collaging of found and salvaged materials with pre-existing ones. The concrete foundation walls, the large supporting posts and the ridge beam were all in fine condition and could be saved. After closer inspection, we discovered that the rafters were rotting at their outer edges.We realized that if we removed the rotten ends, we could use most of their length. We also realized that the rot was being caused by the excessive amounts of water rolling off the flat roof during the spring melt. By stitching rafter extensions onto the ends of the old rafters, we made the roof overhangs much longer so that when the snow melts, the water does not fall against the shed. The front façade is made of recycled glass and surplus windows pur- chased from a local custom window fabricator. Both the steel frame for the two glass doors, and the façade, were designed like a quilt whose outer dimensions and component parts were fixed. The challenge was to make a coherent looking design from disparate parts. The deep red color used both on the steel and a wood frame helps stitch the pieces together visually. Because the façade is facing southwest, it acts as a passive solar collector. The side and back walls were constructed using salvaged, cast glass, door fronts from old Herman Miller furniture, with occasional cedar lattice inserts. The glass and cedar panels are wrapped around the supporting building volume like a large blanket suspended a distance from the tar paper underneath, forming an air pocket that heats up during the day and helps keep the building warm at night. The cedar was used for visual relief and in places where cutting the glass would have been difficult —

Le studio Barnstone I l est inhabituel de voir l’architecture comme on le ferait pour un piquer – le fait de rapiécer des brins de tissus non reliés, bien souvent des rebuts, en juxtaposition – mais la description d’un piquer définit bien les façons dont on a conçu et construit le projet de l’atelier et du studio de Rossland, en Colombie-Britan- nique.

Dans le cadre de ce projet, nous avons pris un vieil atelier de camions délabré sur le point de s’effondrer et l’avons transformé en un studio d’artiste hiverisé et habitable. La façade est faite de verre recy- clé et de fenêtres de surplus que nous nous sommes procurés d’un fabricant de fenêtres person- nalisées de la région.Tant le châs-

sis d’acier des deux portes de verre que la façade ont été conçus comme un piquer dont les dimen- sions et les composantes externes ont été rapiécées. Le défi était le suivant : de concevoir une struc- ture cohérente à partir de pièces disparates. La couleur rouge foncé a été utilisée tant sur l’acier que sur la structure de bois pour tenter de relier les pièces les unes

aux autres, visuellement. Puisque la façade fait face au sud-ouest, elle agit comme capteur solaire passif. Les murs latéraux et celui de l’arrière ont été construits à partir de devants de portes de verre coulé récupérées d’anciens meu- bles Herman Miller, avec des inser- tions de treillis en cèdre. Les panneaux de verre et de cèdre

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