Jobe Burns Breathes Life Back Into a 300-Year-Old Farmhouse
Blending the old with the new.
Summary
- Jobe Burns, known for his collaboration with Samuel Ross on the homeware label “Concrete Objects,” has now restored a historic English farmhouse.
- The project’s design was shaped by Burns’ discovery of hidden rooms, inspiring him to focus on revealing the home’s original character.
- The restoration combines the farmhouse’s preserved original elements with new, modern additions, showcasing Burns’ adaptive design approach.
You might know Jobe Burns best through his work with Samuel Ross, which (formally) began back in 2017, when the pair launched the homeware label “Concrete Objects“.
Since, Burns appears to have been on a mission to explore all facets of his creative practice, he has designed small objects, monolithic signage, and squishy furniture. Now, he’s revealing his latest work: the restoration of a centuries-old farmhouse in the English countryside.
The project came to Burns unexpectedly, through a conversation at his graduate show from the spatial design course at London’s Chelsea College of Art. The new owners had bought the property set in the heart of the rural West Country, and it needed some TLC.
Felix Speller
Felix Speller
Felix Speller
Using the home as a studio of sorts (Burns has also just recently finished a sculpture degree at the Royal College of Art), he spent time getting to know the property. Details unearthed themselves as he looked around, including – but not limited to – a blocked-up doorway tucked behind a cupboard.
“I took the cupboard down, removed the floor, knocked through the breeze blocks, and uncovered two hidden, brick-arched rooms,” he said. “It was like the house had been holding something back, waiting for the right moment to be seen.”
Turns out, this single moment would go on to inform the rest of the design concept: “it reinforced the idea that this was less about redesigning and more about uncovering what was already there.”
Across the whole property, soft curves have been reinstated to create a sense of tactility. Rooms are designated by subtle color and material shifts – from the bright and airy off-white kitchen walls to the rich terracotta bathrooms.
Rashidi Noah
Some elements from the original property have been retained and restored, with others, namely dead trees becoming furniture and roof tiles becoming part of the fireplace, turned into something new. Burns has injected modern moments through the use of contemporary furniture. In the living room, Andu Masebo’s Tubular Chair is paired with a table from Burns’ label Orbe.
Similarly to his ability to shape-shift across disciplines, Burns can adjust his aesthetic project to project too. In fact, at first, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to detect this as one of his projects. But dig a little deeper into the process, and you uncover his signature: taking time to understand whatever the medium is that he’s working with, and applying a humanist approach to the process.
“You choose the building to adapt your behaviour to it – it’s a shift from the external world,” Burns says. “This farmhouse draws you back into a time when things were slower, and gives you more time to let thoughts linger. The architecture holds a kind of stillness, a patience, and, in turn, it asks the same of you.”
Take a look around the house above.
