This project presented an exciting opportunity to create a modern, high quality music recording facility and art studio in collaboration with the two artist owners and architect Eleni Papadopoulou of Level Acoustic Design. The owners, who work individually and in collaboration, required bespoke accommodation to facilitate their work. The resulting design provides world class recording studios and associated facilities, art studios, office space for support staff and a canteen for permanent staff and visiting musicians.

The interior design was of prime importance to create a calm backdrop for the creative process. The client chose a minimal palette of white lime plaster, painted timber wall linings and oak. The interiors retain a connection to the building’s agricultural roots, and also convey a haptic quality by expressing its original steel structure internally. Natural light was a key consideration and generous rooflights bring light flooding in to all the spaces.

The plan draws the visitor in to a series of connecting spaces that gradually reduce in scale, culminating in the entrance to the expansive recording studio with a large picture window connecting it to the landscape beyond.

The studio houses two creative spaces; a music writing room invites the woodland in and the design replicates an earlier writing space inhabited by the artist. An art studio provides the dual purpose of a large, voluminous space filled with light and a smaller, more intimate space for concentrated working.

Extensive landscaping grounds the building in its location with the metal folded seam cladding providing a contrasting backdrop for the naturalistic planting scheme.

Reusing the existing foundations and steel frame to reduce carbon emissions, a new highly insulated shell was created in conjunction with MVHR, a large PV array, air source heat pumps and battery storage which allow the studio to continue recording during a powercut.