Big Barn in Glen Ellen, California, Napa County Home, New California Wine Country Property Photos
Big Barn in Glen Ellen, CA
July 31, 2020
Big Barn
Design: Faulkner Architects
Location: Glen Ellen, Napa County, San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California, USA
Big Barn

North of San Francisco, in Glen Ellen, a less populated part of the Napa wine country, the culture has been based on agriculture and was named for an original winery. Jack London made this his permanent home here in the early 1900s. Drawn by the land, London believed in the redemptive qualities of rural life. Less than an hour from the city, rolling hills covered with groves of oak trees surround the downtown.

The strong agricultural history has affected the built environment here with many examples of barn like houses that are confusingly morphed between the two vocabularies. On the existing footprint of a 1950s ranch house, this family getaway evolved in response to a request for a retreat from their urban lifestyle. The atmosphere of a tack barn renovated into a bunk house on site inspired thoughts of a larger barn like typology for this main house of 3,900 square feet.
The request from the client was to build in a consistent way within the rolling hills dappled with agricultural buildings. A simple, rectangular, two-story form emerged with an asymmetrical gabled roof. The shorter side of the roof faces the southwest sun and reduces heat gain to the structure. Fenestration is limited to this exposure a...