Chicago-based architecture and design firm Moss has completed a Corten-clad microbrewery in Buchanan, Michigan, created by modifying a prefabricated barn structure.
Designed for Buchanan Craft, the St Joe River Brewery is a "unique agricultural experience" combining production facilities and an organic farm with a restaurant and tasting room.
The St Joe River Brewery is located in Michigan
Responding to the rural site, Moss took cues from pole barns, which are pre-fabricated kit buildings ubiquitous across rural America.
Rather than simply using one of these prefabricated barns, the firm used it as a starting point, retaining the basic structure but customising it with weathering steel and burnt timber cladding, a sloping roof and a large glazed corner. The microbrewery is clad in Corten steel
"[Pole barns] are plopped down on a foundation without site orientation taken into consideration, and end up costing more to operate over time because they do not respond to the site they are on," said the studio.
"We knew a fully customised building was not in the budget... with a little creativity and ingenuity we made slight modifications to the pole barn model to better respond to the use and the site."

The most dramatic of these modifications has opened up the northeastern corner of the barn to create a light-filled tasting room, leading out onto an external patio sheltered by the overhanging roof.
A winery sits alongside this tasting room, on the ...