Troldtekt acoustic panels complement barn-themed garage

In Somerset, a Grade-II listed 18th century home has been build into a new intriguing garage with a workshop / utility area and a garage housing a collection of classic cars.

Set in the grounds of a Grade-II listed 18th-century home in Somerset, UK is an intriguing new timber, steel and concrete garage. Designed as an ’ultra-flexible space’ coupled with a ’long life, loose-fit’ approach, the 165sq m project is split between a workshop / utility area and a five-car garage and created to house the client’s classic car collection.

Architects Bindloss Dawes worked closely with the client Tim Swift and drew on neighbouring agricultural barns for design utilising their contextual appropriateness and their lessons in low cost and materially efficient design. The ultimate goal was to develop a flexible, long-life concept that could be used for a range of different setups at different stages of the building’s life.

The final result is an aesthetically beautiful building with its deceptively simple wooden barn-themed styling using agricultural materials such as concrete and recycled wood under a zinc roof. The exposed steel structure arranged in simple portal frames house large areas of glazing to maximise natural daylight while the 7m entrance to the garage, features a three-bay wide, floor-to-ceiling timber screen that smoothly slides beyond the footprint of the foundations to provide easy access into the garage.

Oliver Bindloss, Director at Bindloss Dawes commented, “Our aim was to create a building that appeared elegant and familiar at first glance but then opened up to reveal something surprising and unexpected. Using the barn typology helped us achieve this, creating simple timber forms that you might expect to find throughout the countryside, but then introducing some theatre with the big sliding doors, opening up the building to reveal the car collection inside.”

With so many surfaces comprising steel, timber and polished concrete floor, the architects incorporated Troldtekt’s acoustic panels to clad both the walls and ceilings between the steel frames for sound absorption and to combat the issue of reverberating noise. This was an ideal choice for this application. Not only do the clean and simple panels add to the building’s overall minimalist design but their proven sound absorption qualities help the interior acoustic environment transforming the space into more of a gallery than a traditional garage.