Funny Girl Farm Barn

Architect: Szostak Design, Inc. (visit website)

Location: Durham, North Carolina

100 Word Description:The Produce Shed at the Funny Girl Farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina is a 4,300 square foot barn to be used for the processing and packaging of produce grown on the farm. The shed’s open-air structure shelters a large, open workspace and equipment storage area flanked by a linear bar of enclosed utility spaces including produce coolers, rest rooms, offices, employee lounge and a tool shop. The shed can also double as a gathering area for both informal and programmed entertainment events in the off-season.

Architect’s Statement: The building’s roof assumes the form of a gracefully shallow hyperbolic parabola, fashioned from an eccentrically disciplined interplay of sloping steel perimeter girders and glue-laminated wood rafters, clad in pine board planking and TPO membrane. The roof-form is functional, inducing natural ventilation and offering end-bay clearance for the farm’s tractors. Nevertheless, it is equally a lyrical gesture, intended to ennoble the work-a-day craft of preparing a crop for market. The shed’s production furnishings ” a series of washing stations for vegetables, fruits and eggs – have been designed to be readily broken-down and stored wherever the space is needed for the staging of entertainment events or public receptions. Construction of the Produce Shed is slated for Spring 2014, with the architect’s design/build subsidiary serving as general contractor.

Type of Construction: As a working farm structure, the Produce Shed is constructed of durable materials highly resistant to extremes of temperature, humidity and demanding agrarian use. The shed’s three enclosing walls are constructed of a finely-grained cypress lattice hung off the building’s thinly wrought structural steel frame. The lattice acts as a permeable scrim, sheltering the interior of the shed from the summer sun, while still preserving an intimate visual connection to the surrounding farmland.

Photography: Szostak Design 2014