A traditional barn rebuilt into a contemporary coworking office and artisan workshop
We created a modern and sustainable rural coworking space from scratch.
We built a meeting place, which could be the anchor for many to rediscover the beauty of rural living, slow life, and rebranded traditions despite the calling of the big cities.
National
Romania
Transylvania
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-11-30
As an individual
First name: Egyed Last name: János Gender: Male Nationality: Hungary If relevant, please select your other nationality: Romania Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Lacului 9. Town: Miercurea Ciuc Postal code: 530240 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40755098964 E-mail:egyedjanos91@gmail.com
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Yes
New European Bauhaus or European Commission websites
The traditional barns, the relatively large buildings that have slowly lost their purpose in the life of our Transylvanian villages are being reinterpreted as a way of giving back to the community.
Transforming the traditional barn, a bygone workroom of past centuries, into a new contemporary community working space.
In our globalized world, the aging of small cities and villages is a huge problem. One of the reasons for this is that young people are being drawn away by urban affluence, cultural milieu and subcultures.
Our project provides a solution to this aging by giving young people the opportunity to have a place to practice their contemporary professions in the countryside, in the traditional village, where they can indirectly get closer to nature.
Our project can be installed in any micro-community, any porch barn can be transformed to create a global network.
1. Preserving rural heritage
2. Redefining rural living concepts
3. Creating a sustainable coworking environment
4. Connecting people and developing exciting ideas
5. Developing equity, leveling out demographic imbalance
In the traditional Transylvanian landscape, each family's farm had a barn. This building stood in the middle of the courtyard behind the dwelling house. It was a basic element of earning a livelihood and farming.
In today's globalized world, these structures are increasingly losing their function. Family farms are slowly being dismantled, livestock farms are being concentrated on a single large-scale farm, and a large percentage of the population is finding work in nearby towns.
The barns are thus losing their function and are standing unused in the yards waiting to be demolished, despite the fact that many of them are still buildings of immaculate construction. They are built of traditional materials, clay brick, clay tile, pine wood and plank.
Our concept is based on the idea of reusing vacant buildings to meet the needs of the 21st century. It includes community offices and community workshops, which although have a contemporary interior, do not distance themselves from nature in their use of materials.
Our barn is made of wood, built around 1950, and wood is used for the interior cladding. One cubic meter of wood sequesters one tonne of carbon dioxide during its lifetime. If we cut down the trees and replace them with new ones, the carbon balance will be zero. However, the carbon balance can be negative if the felled wood is preserved and used as building material or furniture. Local barns have stored carbon for at least a hundred years and by reusing them we hope to gain at least another hundred years. And this is a powerful force.
First key objective is to create a sustainable design and employ the cycle of nature:
In our area, the barns were made of wooden beams without painting. The rain and sun preserve the wood for many years and give it its characteristic color.
Today this form of construction is completely extinct. Intergenerational knowledge transfer has been superseded by materials and technologies from the West. As people have slowly moved away from nature, they have moved away from the concept of change, from the concept of passing away. The sight of ever-changing (aging wood) is now equated by the locals with poverty, contrasted with the ever-constant appearance of whitewashed, plastered, painted surfaces.
We reused elements of the traditional barn with its own patina, setting an example to young and old alike that our centuries-old building traditions are exemplary, durable and of high quality. Solid wood is a wonderful building and furniture material with its own veining and aging process, also one of our most sustainable materials.
Second key object is to demonstrate the power of community:
In Szeklerland in Transylvania, the barn-keeping bee (common works - hun.”kaláka”) was held mainly to consolidate the house or barn land, and was both work and entertainment. Accompanied by music, they went through every part of the room with a percussive stamp and tried to make the smoothed ground as firm as possible. This movement gave rise to the well-known dance of the Szekler legends, the "csűrdöngölő".
We also reinterpreted the traditions so the softer parts of the construction process were carried out in bees (common works) by digital nomads. This plants the seed in their minds of the power of community, to create something outstanding and contemporary in a form of work that is completely alien to them.
The bee (common works) will be carried on in the community office in the form of joint cooking sessions, brainstorming and knowledge transfer.
The key concept is to make an affordable place for people where they can work and meet remotely. There are many abandoned barns in Transilvanian rural areas which can be rebuilt and refurbished to install such small coworking spaces. These do not necessarily have to offer supreme comfort, but high internet bandwidth, good network and open minded people.
These places have minimum cost and the highest affordability. Normal coworking spaces are located in very busy and expensive places, where investors and landlords make the rules. Our concept is molded for places whose monetary value is not significant but it could have huge intrinsic value for the community.
One benefit is that the local people meet with reinterpreted old traditional architecture in contrast with the modern foreign style architecture. The second is that the big city people understand the close to nature lifestyle in the 21st century.
Digital nomadism is an entry point into this concept. We hope that once we can create places which can attract digital nomads and highly educated people in rural areas, we create equity.
This is a private development. We have not collaborated with any kind of stakeholders on this project yet.
After we returned home from abroad, we started thinking about making an appealing place to work with the possible smallest green footprint where we really feel at home and where we don't seek/chase/miss the feelings of a big city.
We are coming from the field of architecture.
The multidisciplinarity of the profession made this project even more appealing for us. Sustainability, history, structure and design were the main driving forces behind the project. Before we had a barn which was used mainly to deposit objects from the household. Now it is valued as a real estate property which can be used for a variety of purposes. We even have a stained glass workshop installed in one part of the barn where an established stained glass artist produces his work.
The main outcome of our project is that we have managed to give new life to an abandoned barn, without displacing it from its harmonious village landscape. Hidden amongst the other barns in its neighborhood, it became a cozy coworking office and workshop, a place for community work and knowledge sharing.
The coworking office is currently home for knowledge workers, several friends who have moved back home in recent years, leaving the hustle and bustle of the big city behind.
It accommodates a local stained glass workshop where our designers from the barn can catch new fresh and uncommon ideas, can help out each other with exciting new projects.
We saved more than 12,4 cubic meter wood, which locks plenty CO2, and with a good insulation it became an energy efficient appendix of the household.
Normally the coworking spaces are located in city centers and well known places. Our concept is based on dispersing a big coworking space. As we know smaller groups can forge stronger connections. We decided to design for micro communities: smaller places for fewer people. It also comes more naturally considering the rural environment. We refurbished a broken barn to turn it into a jewel and it became a hotspot for our digital nomad friends.
The basic idea of the coworking office and workshop came from the fact that the barn was the core of the work in the past and we wanted to give it back the same function in our lives in a 21st century interpretation.
In this project, by treating the barn and its past as an essential substance in the design process, we tried to keep the original form and its materials, as much as possible, thereby preserving the traditional village image. The building is made from naturally aged wood, with traditional orange clay tiles on top.
We placed windows on the openings covered with wood, insulated them from the inside and created an interior with comfort that meets today's needs.
Inside, we covered the spaces with wood so that the closeness to nature can also be felt in the interior.
Our concept can be replicated in almost any place and we could build a network from these coworking spaces. The main concept is to create these coworking spaces for people who want to leave rural areas because they can make a better life elsewhere. We truly believe that we can resurrect the village life with small jewel-like coworking spaces, where upon arrival, everyone with a local interest can find their place.
Globalization is making equity disappear. Globalization in many cases means people leave inferior infrastructure for better places. This ultimately is a far more dangerous trend than many would think so.
The big-cities are exciting and have a really effective living environment, but they do not produce food. For a reliable and healthy food chain we need a healthy and living rural environment. These small coworking spaces can gather micro collectives and create a stabilizing force for the demographic imbalance, creating a better and more sustainable living environment for all of us.
