AMERICAN EQUESTRIAN DESIGN

American Equestrian Design Barns, Farms, and Stables

by Blackburn Architects

John A. Blackburn with Nancy Easter White

CONTENTS

7 Introduction

10 EAST 12

Heronwood Farm, Upperville, VA

24

Rutledge Farm, Middleburg, VA

32

River Farm, Leesburg, VA

42

Meadow Creek Farm, Floyd, VA

54 SOUTH 56

Magnolia Farm, Camden, SC

70

Ketchen Place Farm, Rock Hill, SC

78

Glenwood Farm, Ridgeway, SC

88 NORTH 90

Beechwood Farm, Weston, MA

102

North Bear Farm, Medfield, MA

112

Winley Farm, Millbrook, NY

122 WEST 124

Coyote Rock Ranch, Terrebonne, OR

144

Devine Ranch, Aptos, CA

152

Lucky Jack Farm, Rancho Santa Fe, CA

164

Private Ranch, Wolf Creek, MT

182 CENTRAL 184

Pegaso Farm, Mettawa, IL

200

Oakhaven Farm, Austin, TX

212

Hidden Arches, Ballwin, MO

230

Project Credits

231 Acknowledgments

“Light, air, space to breathe.

6

INTRODUCTION

Blackburn Architects, founded by John Blackburn in 1983, is focused on a very special market: equestrian architecture. Using principles of natural ventilation, we create buildings that “breathe” with air and with natural light, dissipating heat and moisture.

An architect with an engineer’s fascination for science and its influence on design, John Blackburn refers to vertical ventilation as the firm’s most important consideration. He explains that, “We design a project to be a natural machine, not just a static structure. We place our barns perpendicular to prevailing summer breezes to take best advantage of a site’s natural features. Then, by venting through the roof, we create ‘chimneys’ encouraging heat to rise.

Reduced pressure on the leeward side of a roof, similar to the low pressure created by the shape of an airplane wing, suctioning air out through openings in the roof or vented skylights.”

This “chimney effect” assists in the movement of air in and out of our barns. Differences in indoor-to-outdoor air densities result in temperature and moisture differences. The greater the thermal difference created by the steepness of the roof, the greater the buoyancy force and thus the chimney effect.

To explain, significant temperature differences exist between the roof ridge of our barns and the floor level. Heat generated by horses rises and is replaced by cooler air entering through low wall openings, Dutch doors, windows, and eave vents.

All of Blackburn’s barn designs harness natural solar and wind power to provide a strong interior current and upward movement of air in the barn without electrical power.

In another sustainable technique favored by Blackburn’s designers, we often specify vented skylights glazed with a translucent polycarbonate panel. This provides a low-cost, shatterproof feature that adds diffused light in the interior, reducing dark, damp areas where odors are created and further reducing the demand on electrical power to generate light.

It’s all in the design.”

7

To begin What’s our story? The story begins in the country’s rural south and continues to a modern studio in Washington, D.C. John Blackburn’s sister rode a retired Tennessee Walker, which 12-year-old John borrowed to carry a fishing pole to the creek or race a friend across the fields of east Tennessee. But horses had held meager interest for a man who would then go on to become so linked with them as his career progressed.

After graduating from Clemson University with a degree in Architecture and working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, John attended Washington University, earning a Master’s Degree in Urban Design. In 1983, he and a former partner, Robert B. Smith, created the precursor to Blackburn Architects, Smith Blackburn Architects. Their early focus was on the adaptive reuse of older structures, the residential market, and equestrian design. The firm still practices in these three niches.

Our special focus in equestrian projects came about by happy accident. Cobbling together a living designing porch additions, hot dog kiosks, and garages, the struggling architects were tipped off about a prospective project happening 50 miles to the west of Washington, D.C., in rural Middleburg, Virginia. A wealthy client with 500 acres and Thoroughbred racehorses needed a new facility. John and his partner resolved to win the project. To do so, they studied the historic local “vernacular” of horse country. Photographing old barns and researching the engineering principles keeping them viable for more than a century, the partners transferred their ideas to hand-drawn sketches and were awarded the commission for their ingenuity. The successful project, Heronwood Farm, seeded the firm’s fortunes and has led to hundreds more horse farms over the years.

Learn from the past, focus on the future Heronwood Farm was something new in the world of architecture–as far as we know, it was the first horse barn designed by architects, combining local architectural traditions, historic engineering principles, and a modern aesthetic.

John Blackburn explained that his “aha” moment was experiencing air flowing through the finished barns at Heronwood and seeing how well the horses (and his client) responded.

The successful project was the result of careful design, but it benefited enormously from correct site placement. By chance, on this starter project, the young architects were fortunate to work with one of the leading landscape architects in the United States at the time, Morgan Wheelock. It was Wheelock’s site plan–placing the structures correctly on the undulating property–that led to much of the building’s breathability. The lesson learned for John has become one of the essential signatures of nearly every project since.

8

AMERICAN EQUESTRIAN DESIGN

Early pioneers carried building traditions with them across the Atlantic Ocean. They used available materials like wood and stone, creating simple forms and massing. That’s why historic towns like Middleburg, Virginia have examples of what is generally called the “Federal” style of architecture. The form is typically that of a simple box with a gabled roof.

Structures on working 18th- and 19th-century farms were built in this unadorned style. Early Virginian barns tended to be tall, narrow, wooden/masonry buildings with very little ornamentation.

When Blackburn Architects (then Smith Blackburn Architects) received its first equestrian commission at Heronwood Farm in 1983, John Blackburn and his then-partner Robert B. Smith studied old barns in the region to get a sense of regional building styles for their design. They knew the barns they designed had to check the box for the local “vernacular” or the client might object. Certainly, then as now, the client’s idea of how they want their farm to look is an essential part of every project.

With the basic architectural form decided, Blackburn and Smith looked deeper into best design practices for livestock structures. They found ventilation to be an important component of early barns. Taking their first tenuous steps into the world of specialized barn design, the partners looked to Morgan Wheelock, a landscape architect who had been commissioned to design the Heronwood Farm site, which had emphasized ventilation to be an important component of early barns. Blackburn and Smith incorporated his brilliant theories of introducing natural light and ventilation into two new barns.

Wheelock’s passive barn systems helped ensure that horses stayed healthy when stabled indoors. Conventional barn ventilation is horizontal, achieved by opening the front and back doors to catch the breeze. Unfortunately, each horse also catches whatever may be airborne from the previous horse. Random, ubiquitous, and ill-placed fans, a common occurrence in many barns, exacerbate the process by circulating bacteria and disease. To alter these standards, Wheelock advocated siting barns perpendicular to the prevailing summer breeze.

10

EAST At Heronwood, Blackburn and Smith specified low vents and vented skylights to encourage upward ventilation.

These principles were largely based on 18th-century Dutch-Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli’s equation of vertical lift—similar to the speed of airflow over an airplane wing. The result was that their design was also facilitated by the rise of hot air known as the “chimney effect,” where air is pulled in low and vented out high.

Horses give off a lot of body heat and humidity; with the heat of the sun warming the roof and skylight, there is a heat differential created between the structure’s floor and its roof ridge. Heat rises, and the Bernoulli Principle moves it along as the prevailing breeze blows across the roof.

The Bernoulli Principle and the chimney effect work together with the design of our barns to make them passive “machines” that ventilate vertically to remove harmful bacteria, pathogens, humidity, and odors through openings in the roofs and eaves. The chimney effect works to the barns’ benefit even when there is no wind.

The evolution of our firm has meant we have been given the opportunity to refine these ideas over hundreds of projects. While the basic principles remain the same, there are regional differences evident in our equestrian facilities.

The four projects within the next section are influenced by the mid-Atlantic coastal climate. With four distinct seasons, this region has hot, humid summers, relatively mild winters, and pleasant springs and falls. Horses are less than comfortable in the heat, therefore harnessing the prevailing summer breezes is essential in barns of this region.

11

94

AMERICAN EQUESTRIAN DESIGN NORTH

BEECHWOOD FARM WESTON, MA

95

96

AMERICAN EQUESTRIAN DESIGN NORTH

BEECHWOOD FARM WESTON, MA

97

98

AMERICAN EQUESTRIAN DESIGN NORTH

BEECHWOOD FARM WESTON, MA

99

100

AMERICAN EQUESTRIAN DESIGN NORTH

BEECHWOOD FARM WESTON, MA

101

ISBN 9781864708950 ISBN 9781864708950

9 781864 708950 9 781864 708950

55500 55500

$55.00 [USA] £40.00 [GB]