A Warm, Modern Hideaway For Tazmanian Sheep Shearers

John Wardle Architects turned a traditional structure into a cozy getaway. Barns are big in modern design these days--do a search for the word on Co.Design alone and you’ll pull up a wealth of conversions, reinterpretations, and adaptive reuses of the traditional rural icon. On North Bruny Island, just off Tazmania, architect John Wardle (of his eponymous Melbourne-based firm) started with a structure once-removed from the classic A-frame, updating a sheep shearer’s quarters into a truly lovely guesthouse on his own property. The surrounding land is still a fully functioning farm--the cultivation of which dates back as one of the first grants in the area--so the development had to be sensitive to the site’s heritage as well as to its current operations and responsibilities while complementing the adjacent historic cottage. The exterior is clad in corrugated iron, ...