Three Barns is a Sun Valley home that appears to move with its landscape
This home by Field Architecture in Idaho, USA, is composed of three gabled structures that take their cues from their surroundings
Set in the leafy meadows of Sun Valley, Idaho, Three Barns is a new-build home in the American wilderness – a structure designed as much to provide cosy shelter as to nod to its striking, surrounding nature. The project is the first in the state by the California-based firm Field Architecture – a studio known for its high quality, crisp family homes and retreats, such as a Big Sur house completed in 2024.
Explore Three Barns by Field Architecture
The Sun Valley house was conceived as a complex of three gabled structures – forms that nod to the region's agricultural barns – which also lends the project its name. Surrounded by windy planes and undulating mountains, the architecture was always going to be influenced by nature's movement in the area, a part of the US wilderness that never stands still.
The architects explain: 'Mountain ranges rise in four directions, grasses bend with the prevailing winds, snow gathers and recedes with the seasons, and water moves across the hillside toward the Big Wood River below. Rather than level this terrain into a platform for the house, the architecture takes its cues from the land’s existing structure.
'Natural benches become places of occupation, drainage patterns remain legible, and the native meadow continues between and around the buildings. The house emerges from this reading of the site as a collection of inhabitable terraces, each held within the larger topography of the watershed.'
Each of the three barns is rotated to respond to its terrain and, as a result, has its own specific view, relationship to the valley and quality of light. But together, the three buildings form their own little mountain range – containing discrete areas for the bedrooms; the entertaining areas with the kitchen and dining space at their heart; and the entry sequence and main living room.
Meanwhile, 'circulation becomes an encounter with the land', the architects highlight, pointing out that when residents move between the volumes, glazed breezeways mean they experience stepping out into the open air and leafy meadows.
Inside, contemporary design meets the concept's robust nature, with all mods cons making this a true, four-season alpine landscape. The Three Barns' respective three chimneys, built out of local stone, serve as marks, gently highlighting the Sun Valley home's presence.
