
STORM HILL ORCHARD BARN
The Storm Hill Orchard Barn renovation transforms an abandoned apple barn into a spacious home-away-from-home for a couple with a love of writing, art, and vintage collectibles.
Sited just south of the quaint lakeside village of Empire, the barn is a memory of the region’s agricultural past and a landmark within the town. The early stages of design were an archeological process of discovering the stories both literally and figuratively written on the existing architecture. From cladding boards stamped with heirloom apple species—Grimes Golden, Shiawassee Beauty, Northern Spy, Tolman Sweet—to receipts scribbled onto columns and shelves alongside a Worker’s Compensation posting from 1942, the architecture recorded the day-to-day workings of the orchard, a history the client wanted to preserve as the barn was transformed.
Who Private Client
Where Empire, MI
When 2017
How Project Team: Elise DeChard

The magic of the barn’s vast unpartitioned floorplan is recreated in the free-flowing living spaces of the renovation. The 3,200 square foot first floor is programmed with a series of “cabins” housing bedrooms, bathrooms, and laundry, with windows, hammock nooks, and halls scattered between them. To open up the interior of the deep footprint, the central third of the second floor is removed, creating a skylit double-height living and dining space. This large volume is flanked by two second story lofts, left open and adaptable for flexible use, reminiscent of its agricultural days. The lofts are variably programmed as a project space, a writer’s loft, a movie theater, a music room, and additional “camping” space for when many friends come to visit. A partial structural excavation to the north exposes the existing joists and blocking above the kitchen, creating a lattice structure that defines a domestic scale for the space while still allowing diffused sunlight to filter in from above. The southwest corner of the structure is carved out for a screened porch, removing a portion of the exterior wall entirely, but preserving a painted segment of wall and one existing window to create a liminal interior-exterior space that recalls the original raw and unconditioned barn.


















Through creative tectonic exploration, care toward material ecologies, and attention to the smallest of details, the Storm Hill Orchard Barn renovation works to reveal the unseen beauty of the structure, uncovering hidden histories and carving through the structure to create new ones.






