TETON VALLEY BARNDOMINIUM
A functional building with traditional lines
Teton Valley, Idaho • 4,250 sq. ft.
Design Team: Chris Moulder, AIA; Ethan Moulder, Andy Bocardo; Ben Yerich
When our clients discovered two parcels of land in Teton Valley, Idaho, with two river channels meandering through, they fell in love with the settings and made the decision to acquire them. The family loves spending time outdoors and are passionate fly-fishermen and advocates of maintaining healthy trout fishing habitat.
The ultimate goal of the project is to provide a compound of structures. The first phase of the program is to build a full-time caretaker’s residence with storage for heavy equipment and shop space on the south parcel. Such a building, coined a “barndominium”, is essentially a combination of a "barn" and a "living space” built above, or around a larger space that is used as a barn, workshop, or shed. Principal Chris Moulder has been designing this type of structure for many years before the term started being used. For this project, he designed a structure with a small caretaker’s apartment on the first floor next to four bays of shop and vehicle storage. The second floor is a larger guest apartment with a living room, kitchen and two bedrooms.
Vernacular forms inspire Moulder’s designs as he feels that the local harsh environment has a considerable impact on how a building should be designed. Stylistically, the architecture will be very traditional with shallow-pitched porch roofs and gable dormers, and the roof features lightning rods on top of a Boston ridge vent. The exterior treatment will include square faced logs with vertical shiplap cedar siding in the gable ends and horizontal beveled cedar siding applied on the second floor living unit.
The second phase will be a small main residence on the south parcel to live in while a main house is being built on the north parcel, as well as other guest residences and a fabrication shop for many projects, such as the production of boats, car restoration, etc.
This is a large project with several phases, and in the end, the client intends to make this property their main residence. Located on a beautiful part of the valley, they will be able to live comfortably, enjoy the setting and outdoors with friends and family, and work on their hobbies with ample space to accommodate their process.