Project context
The design retains the original stone gables while placing a lightweight contemporary form above. Thornton developed the structural frame and full external envelope on a design-and-build basis.
Barney’s Ruins
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Project overview
A 200-year-old cottage ruin reimagined through a cantilevered, illuminated dwelling engineered from a modified shipping container.
Technical delivery
A 40-foot container was modelled in Tekla, structurally assessed, cut and reinforced before mounting on steel stanchions.
The off-site package included cladding grid, stairs, balustrades and secondary steel. Corrugated multiwall polycarbonate with concealed LED lighting creates the backlit façade.
Performance outcome
The finished home makes old and new legible at once: weathered stone below, a precisely fabricated luminous volume above. It featured on BBC’s Restoration Rescue.
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